The $4 million building will offer greater office and machine space, with more than half of the structure’s space devoted to manufacturing. At its current home, the company has about 15,000 square feet available.
There will be room to expand beyond that, to the north and the west, Dosser noted. “Take it one step at a time,” he said.
Business is booming, Dosser said. In shaping and sculpting materials, in engraving and more, lasers offer advantages in precision that non-laser computer-controlled machines don’t necessarily have. Lasers can “micro-cut” and “micro-weld,” tackling many jobs too tiny for conventional machines.
“We can start where a conventional CNC (computer numeric control) machine leaves off and go an order of magnitude smaller,” Dosser said.
Mound Laser serves the Department of Defense and clients in the commercial medical devices industry. It’s that latter industry that is especially promising — and perhaps especially worrying, Dosser said.
Like others, Dosser is eyeing a 2.3 percent tax on medical device production as part of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” That tax may stifle production or move it offshore, he said.
“There has been a lot of discussion on that tax on medical devices,” he said. “We see a lot of the big companies cutting back on research and development.”
It’s a concern that U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, has expressed, along with some Democrats, such as Minnesota senator Al Franken, who originally voted for Obamacare.
In December, Franken joined 16 other senators and senators-elect in drafting a letter urging the Obama administration to delay implementing that tax. Last July, in a statement submitted to the Congressional Record, Turner cited Mound Laser by name as a company that could be harmed by the tax.
“Everybody’s focusing on the jobs,” Dosser said. “We don’t want to do anything to curtail the growth of jobs.”
And while Mound Laser is moving from its longtime home at the top of the hill at the Mound Advanced Technology Center in Miamisburg, Dosser is clear on two points: He’s not changing the company’s name and Mound will always be part of the company’s legacy.
Besides the new building, Dosser has other plans. He’s taking advantage of a Wright State University “embedded faculty” program, hiring a professor to help with research and development. Mound will pay half that professor’s salary while the university pays the other half, Dosser said.
It’s an initiative WSU President David Hopkins touched on at the recent Dayton Development Coalition annual meeting.
The idea is to deploy university experts to wring the greatest economic benefit out of Ohio-bred technologies and research, said S. Narayanan, dean of Wright State’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.
The embedded faculty member will still publish papers and work with students, but the focus will also be on commercializing and licensing research with private businesses, Narayanan said.
“The university and the industry, they both have skin in the game,” he said.
Dosser also said he looks forward to participating in what he called an area “neuroscience initiative,” one that will involve WSU and area hospitals. He referred questions on that to the university. An WSU spokesman said last week he couldn’t immediately talk about the program in detail.
Dosser anticipates adding another 10 to 15 employees, this year and next. If industry growth continues, so will the company’s headcount, he said.
The CEO feels fortunate to call Dayton home. He credited Dayton architect Alan Scherr, and Beavercreek-based builder Synergy with making the new building a reality.
“This is indeed a community that cares,” he said.
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