The Business Record recently got a behind-the-scenes look at how a Marshalltown-based company, Mechdyne, is building enterprise-scale, world-class augmented-reality and virtual-reality interactive display systems for companies around the world. 

Many Iowans may not have heard of the company, but they likely have experienced its work when visiting any number of its client companies across the state. For instance, Iowa State University’s new Student Innovation Center features displays that were custom-built by Mechdyne. 

The company will be featured as part of an upcoming article about augmented reality and virtual reality technologies in the 2022 Innovation Iowa magazine to be published in July. 

James Gruening, the company’s co-founder, provided Senior Staff Writer Joe Gardyasz and our photographer, Duane Tinkey, with a tour of the company’s technical center, which is located in a warehouse within walking distance from Mechdyne’s historic headquarters — a three-story brick building where Ford Model A trucks were once assembled. The multifaceted technology company has developed increasingly immersive AR/VR technology-based systems for the past 25 years. 

Inside the high-ceilinged, 30,000-square-foot technical center, Mechdyne technicians work on a constant stream of high-tech display projects that are designed, engineered and then precisely built within flexibly spaced bays on a project-by-project basis, using Kaizen and lean manufacturing best practices. “We use every inch of it,” Gruening said of the space. 

Once assembled and tested, the displays are then carefully packed and shipped to clients around the world. The Mechdyne teams travel with each project to personally construct the displays on-site, whether it’s on the ISU campus or at a corporate technology campus in the Middle East. The company’s systems have been installed at clients’ locations in 48 states and 42 countries, and the pace of its international work has been picking up, Gruening said. 

“Most of our displays are interactive,” he said, noting that many of their corporate customers are manufacturers that use the AR/VR displays for prototyping new products or devices.

Mechdyne has done projects for various U.S. federal agencies — the largest of which was a 10,000-square-foot virtual reality battlefield simulator that Mechdyne built and tested in Marshalltown. Using that system, army medics and soldiers take part in daylong training exercises conducted by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. 

Two years ago, Mechdyne launched its own manufacturing unit that makes custom-built engineered structures for video displays — a function it formerly contracted out. 

A highlight of the visit to the technical center was personally experiencing an immersive, commercial-grade LED wall panel, which a Mechdyne application engineer, Kelsey Levi, had set up for us. 

Using a joystick and wearing special glasses tracking the user’s movements, we got an astronaut’s view of floating around the exterior of the International Space Station as the Earth rotated below us, using a simulation that Mechdyne had developed for NASA. While we were wowed by seeing this on a 60-inch super-high-definition screen, a Mechdyne client uses a multiple-panel version that spans a large room to provide an immersive experience. 

Mechdyne’s 350 employees are spread across about 10 office locations in addition to Marshalltown, among them Chicago, Virginia Beach, Va., and the United Kingdom, as well as remote workers who work in countries such as Sweden and Malaysia. About 20% of the company’s workers are based in Marshalltown. 

For Levi, who graduated with a mathematics degree from Wartburg College less than two years ago, landing a position with Mechdyne and being able to do this type of work in Marshalltown was an incredible opportunity. 

Gruening said while Mechdyne does hire a lot of engineers in the STEM fields, many of his technical people don’t have engineering degrees. “We’re really looking for a certain type of person,” he said. “Our approach is that we hire for attitude, and train for skill.” 

Look for more photos and the article about AR/VR technology trends in our 2022 issue of InnovationIOWA magazine. 

Solar-powered tech center

Approximately 75% of the electricity needs of Mechdyne’s technical center in Marshalltown are powered by the sun. In 2016, the company installed 314 solar panels on the roof of the 30,000-square-foot facility. “It fits our corporate values,” company co-founder James Gruening said. “Knock on wood, it made it through the tornado — which touched down a couple of blocks north of here — as well as the derecho.”