Thesis of LFM '94 Michael Raftery Aids Australian War Memorial
By Jon Griffith, Director of Operations and Partner Relations, LFM-SDM
April 30, 2004
Sometimes impact comes years after you think something is over. Just ask Michael Raftery (LFM 94), ASIC Manufacturing Manager for Echelon Corporation, a company that makes control system hardware and software used in a variety of commercial and residential applications. Raftery recently learned that information in his thesis, "Using the Seven-Step Method to Reduce Defects in a Polymer Sheet Making Process," is being used to research ways to help conserve photographs at the Australian War Memorial.
The thesis, based on an internship at Eastman Kodak in the summer and fall of 1993, examines the origin of "inclusions" in bi-axially oriented polyester film, which Kodak makes under the trademark of ESTAR(R), which has been used primarily as the substrate for x-ray film, but not in consumer film.
"Most people have seen this as the material that transparencies are made from," Raftery explained. "But Kodak's concern was that as the resolution of the x-ray film and other applications increased, the inclusions would cause image aberrations. Obviously this is not what you want to have happen with film, especially x-ray film." The thesis examines the thermal degradation reaction that happens to the polyester during the extrusion process, which occurs at elevated temperature, then uses a multivariate analysis to show that the formation of the inclusions seems to be influenced by several factors in the manufacturing process.
Fast forward to 2004.
Ian Fulton, Senior Conservator, Photographs, Sound and Film, Australian War Memorial, is surfing the web and discovers the thesis abstract on the MIT web site. When he tries to order the thesis on the MIT web site, the thesis ordering function goes down, so he contacts Sloan School of Management Professor Steve Graves, the thesis advisor, who puts him in contact with the LFM-SDM program office, who sends him the thesis.
"Investigation of polyester films is part of our cooperative project, which has received funding from the Australian Research Council. A lot of the effort is around understanding of degradation/non-degradation of color dyes in acetate cine film, and fading of iron-gall inks and pigments in important documents - like constitutions, royal warrants etc. I expect the thesis to be very important, as there doesn't seem to have been lot of activity investigating degradation of ESTAR films. It will be useful to know what the manufacturing problems were."
Never underestimate the results of research, even research that sits in a repository for a decade!