South Carolina recently became the last state to enact boiler safety legislation with the passing into law of The South Carolina Boiler Safety Act (S.581). The law passed without the signature of Gov. Mark Sanford.

S.581 was modeled after Alabama's Boiler and Pressure Vessel Safety Act, which was passed in 2000. However, unlike that bill, the South Carolina legislation does not regulate pressure vessels.

Under the terms of South Carolina's Boiler Safety Act, any new boilers installed and operated in the state must be designed and constructed in accordance with the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code. The legislation provides for a commissioned chief boiler administrator who is charged with enforcing the boiler regulations. It does not, however, provide for funding for state inspectors, and instead specifies that "special" inspectors, such as insurance company inspectors, perform inspections.

The legislation also includes fines of up to $5,000 and a $100-a-day noncompliance charge.

Boiler inspection legislation has been introduced, and has failed to pass, repeatedly over the past 28 years. Speculation has it that a boiler explosion in March at the Intertape Polymer Group plant in Columbia, S.C., which resulted in the death of a worker, helped heighten the awareness of the legislation, and convince people of the need for boiler regulation.

Battelle, the research organization that runs several U.S. national labs, has acquired Bluefin Robotics Corp., a developer of autonomous underwater vehicles.

The price was not disclosed. Battelle said that Bluefin will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary from its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., under its current management.

Battelle, set up as a charitable trust, has a number of roles in the world of technology and science research. It manages national laboratories, including Brookhaven and Oak Ridge, under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. It has a division that works to commercialize technology developed by Battelle or the labs it supervises.

Its national security division serves the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and other agencies of state, local, and federal governments. Bluefin is expected to fit best in the security division, a Battelle spokesperson said.

Bluefin was founded in 1997 by a team of researchers at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company offers vehicles for civilian and military purposes. Bluefin says that its subs can carry out missions like clandestine surveillance or clearing mines without putting sailors or marines at high risk.

The submarines can also perform tasks ranging from scientific exploration of the oceans to commercial surveys of underwater oilfields. Bluefin has picked up the technology for the underwater glider Spray, developed by the Scripps Institution at the University of California, San Diego, with support of the Office of Naval Research. The glider last fall became the first autonomous vehicle to cross the Gulf Stream, a voyage that was the subject of the Input/Output feature in the March issue. A spokesperson said that Bluefin is adapting the glider's design for commercial production.

A new forming method from Bayer Films Americas of Berlin, Conn., is making dashboard dials from single sheets of polycarbonate film. The process, called high-pressure forming, can make in a single part what used to require separate pieces and assembly. The process saves materials and simplifies logistics, according to the company.

Dashboard dials and bezels are created from a single sheet of polycarbonate, thanks to a new forming process.

Senior technical services engineer Patrick Griffin said the process starts by printing in several colors both sides of a clear 0.375 mm thick polycarbonate sheet. Surfaces to be metallized, such as dial bezels, receive coatings of mirrored ink. Sheets are then formed over mandrels at high pressure (1,500 to 4,500 psi) and at sub-thermoforming temperatures (320° to 340°F).

In the past, bezels would be molded separately in platable ABS, then shipped off for electroplating. After plating, the rings would be heat staked to the dashboard dials, Griffin said. The new process skips these steps.

Aligning the bezel edges with the dial tic marks proved painstaking. Bringing the edges of the mirrored ink into registration with the formed surfaces also took several tries. The process remains stable once it's set. The flexible film gains some rigidity in the process, Griffin said.

The kids have heard it all before: Don't play with matches. Stop, drop, and roll. Get out and stay out. So how can firefighters get them to tune in to a safety talk?

Use virtual reality to put the children in a computer-generated fire, says Shana Smith, an assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. A virtual fire is realistic, life-size, three-dimensional, safe, and nontraumatic, Smith said.

A grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security allows Smith to work with the Ames Fire Department to develop fire safety training that takes advantage of the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State.

She intends to create computer simulations of fire in an apartment building, a house, and a classroom. Those simulations will be projected on the university's six-sided virtual reality chamber or its four-sided chamber. Firefighters will teach children how to react to fires in the different settings. If, for example, a main exit is blocked by fire or smoke, they'll learn how to find another exit. They'll also be able to practice their escapes.

"It's impossible to train kids to respond in a fire event by putting them in a fire," she said. "We obviously can't put them in a fire, but we can put them in virtual reality."

Paul Sandoval, the deputy chief of the Ames Fire Department, said that Smith's project will be especially useful in reaching 10- to 14-year-olds who have heard fire safety talks before, but may not have taken them to heart.

But will a virtual fire scare the kids?

Sandoval said he doesn't think so. He said the program will be all about teaching fire safety, not about frightening anyone. He and Smith expect to kick off the program in the fall.

The State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse has purchased a 250 kW fuel cell power plant from FuelCell Energy Inc. of Danbury, Conn. The power plant, which operates on natural gas and produces both electricity and heat, will supply about 5 percent of the campus's energy needs.

IronCAD of Atlanta has released the 3-D design software IronCAD version 8. l A provider of product lifecycle management software and services, UGS Corp. of Plano, Texas, has updated its geometric modeling component software to Parasolid version 17.

PTC Electronics, a distributor and manufacturer of measurement instruments in Mahwah, N.J., has been named North American master distributor for Scaime Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the French maker of load cells and other measuring devices.

MotivePower, a unit of Wabtec Corp. in Wilmerding, Pa., signed a $12 million contract to overhaul 70 locomotives for Helm Financial Corp., a San Francisco-based lessor of freight cars and locomotives.

American Sensor Technologies, a Landing, N.J., manufacturer of MEMS pressure sensors, has acquired Macro Sensors of Pennsauken, N.J., a maker of LDVT position sensors.

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