Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
Newsroom
Aug 9, 2026
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Employees Earn Patent for Invention That Improves Safety
Elaine Williams, business editor, Lewiston Tribune
A case of a machine’s close proximity to the hands of employees bending metal for parts at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories inspired an innovation that has transformed one of the company’s manufacturing processes.The genius of the solution developed by a team of SEL employees was confirmed in a patent issued in 2025, four years after it was deployed.It was among the more than 30 patents honored this summer at an annual celebration the company holds for recipients of patents and authors of technical papers.“There were pinch risks,” said Steve Barner, senior factory manager in Pullman and Lewiston at SEL, a company that invents, designs and manufactures digital products that protect power grids around the world.The machine, known as a press brake, bends sheet metal by pressing it between a punch and a die. At SEL, these are used to make about 120 metal parts for SEL products.Barner’s name appears on the patent along with three other SEL employees, Jason Schacher, a mechanical engineering technician in Lewiston, Kyle Garrett, a process engineering technician in Lewiston, and Josh Stuart, a process and maintenance associate supervisor in Lewiston, as well as two people no longer with SEL.When the team decided to work together on a project to solve the problem, Schacher and Garrett were among a group of employees, who, during some shifts, might need to have their hands inches away from a machine, with heavy moving parts, hundreds of times per day.The reason they can speak about the issue in the past tense involves their ingenuity, cooperation and intelligence.The innovation they developed is an adjustable table that attaches to the press brake to hold the piece of metal, which sits on the table rather than in employees’ hands when being bent. The tool is so effective that there have been no safety incidents in this area since it was introduced in September 2021, Barner said.And also has other advantages, such as being faster and producing higher quality parts, Barner said.“Normally when you do a press brake operation, your hands can vary the pressure that they’re putting against the machine,” Garrett said. “This tool allows you to actually apply the same amount of pressure on every single part.”Once the piece is attached to the table, employees can move their hands away and push a pedal with their feet to prompt the machine to make the bend.Vices on the table can be positioned in dozens of configurations so that it can be used for a variety of parts.The table can be attached or removed from a press brake machine in less than a minute. That is important because the product mix can change throughout the day and includes about 20 parts that presented a potential pinch risk and larger parts that didn’t.And exactly which parts a line will be expected to produce varies daily depending on internal orders from other departments.The complexity of what SEL wanted to accomplish could be part of why the invention met the criteria for a patent.The team started by looking at what was on the market. Most of the options were large, expensive automated cells likely intended for lines that made the same thing for weeks or months at a time.In spite of the huge void, within two months, the SEL team had its solution deployed, working on the project in addition to their regular responsibilities, developing and testing three iterations to learn what worked best.“We follow world class manufacturing here which teaches that those closest to the work are the experts,” Barner said. “Part of that is empowering our employees. Having our experts right there really shortened the number of iterations.”Each person played a different role. Barner assembled the team and oversaw the process.Stuart handled the computer-aided design.“I was involved in the initial brainstorming sessions,” Garrett said. “I worked with (Stuart) a lot ondesigns. At the time, I was mainly a press brake operator, so I got to use the designs as they were iterated.”Then he would go back to Stuart with ideas, Garrett said. “He would implement them. We’d test them and keep doing that.”Schacher’s part was similar to Garrett’s. “I helped (Stuart) out with the prototyping and I also did a lot of the testing.”That work had profound implications for SEL and the men, all of whom are benefiting from the project more than five years later in ways that go beyond having names on a patent.For starters, they know their contributions still make the jobs of their co-workers safer and less stressful.And all of them have been promoted to different positions that allow them to solve more challenges across more of the factory, something they trace back to skills and aptitudes they discovered developing the table.Take Stuart.“This was my first in-depth design troubleshooting experience,” Stuart said. “I learned a lot about what works, what does not work, working with these guys on various scenarios, how we can make the design better and simpler as well as improve its manufacturability.”In his present job, Stuart supervises a team of mechanical technicians “working with them to solve problems very much like this related to design and process.”Garrett had a similar take.“It opened my eyes, being able to see, ‘Well, this is a problem. What other problems can be fixed like this?’’That new perspective prompted him to learn more modeling and drafting he uses in a job where he finds “pain points” and identifies ways to alleviate them to manufacture items faster with higher quality, Garrett said.One of their latest assignments takes them back to their first collaboration.“We’ve almost completed a second version of the table,” Garrett said. “After a few years of using it, you learn things that maybe don’t work as well as you were hoping they would. We’re getting a lot of feedback from newer and older operators about things that could be changed.”The new model, Stuart said, is even easier to use and simpler to manufacture.Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.To veiw the original article, click here.Reprinted with permission of The Lewiston Tribune, copyright 2026.