Matt Flego makes cool-looking stools that have a wooden seat atop an intricate maze of thick metal, instead of legs.

If Flego could trim his manufacturing cost, he said, he could keep his price at a more consumer-friendly $185 each. To do that, though, he needs equipment that he can’t find: a small-scale, computer-adjustable machine that bends and cuts wire. Right now, to create the twisted-metal base, he sends the wire out to a larger manufacturer.

“There’s not an operation in Vermont that I could go to that has this machine,” he said.

Flego presented his wire-bender idea at the most recent Pitch It, Fab It competition at Burlington Generator, the downtown maker space partly funded by the University of Vermont to foster creativity and innovation in its home city. UVM’s Office of the Vice President of Research spawned Pitch It, Fab It to give budding inventors access to the advanced machinery and expertise of its Instrumentation & Model Facility. The competition’s winners receive prizes to cover the cost for the IMF to fabricate a prototype of their idea.

“I just really need help with the mechanical side of things,” Flego told the IMF’s judging team. “I’m not a mechanical engineer.”

Located just off East Street, the IMF contains a herd of hulking equipment that cuts, presses and drills – some of it dating back 50 years – as well as a fancy new 3-D printer and extensive workshop of small tools to accomplish any conceivable job. Most of the time, the staff designs instruments that UVM faculty use to conduct research or help with senior engineering students’ projects.

“I knew that the IMF guys are expert machinists, and they’re very well-equipped to do what I need,” Flego said.

Flego was one of four inventors who presented ideas at Pitch It, Fab It last month. The judges awarded Flego the top prize of $1,000 partly because his tabletop-size concept would include an open-source design that others could adapt and build themselves.

“We’re looking for something that has a potential market,” said J. Tobey Clark, the IMF’s director and organizer of Pitch It, Fab It.

A winning project must depend on the IMF’s resources and machinery, which most independent inventors don’t have in their personal workshops. It also must be simple enough to build with the limited funding.

Jim Wick, a retired organizer of the First Robotics competitions for high school students and self-described “nerd” who likes to tinker at the Generator, impressed the Pitch It, Fab It judges with his simple proposal to address a universal frustration.

“This earth-shattering problem we have today is the dispensing of tape,” Wick said upon presenting his idea: Tape Fish.

From its gaping mouth, the packing-tape tool rips smoothly and is less prone to cause inadvertent sticking than most tape dispensers on the market. It needs a proper spring, Wick told the judges, and plastic that’s easily injection-molded for manufacturing.

“If I had died and gone to heaven,” he said, he’d license his prototype to a major office-supply company such as 3M.

The IMF judges awarded Wick with the second prize: $500 worth of their services to complete a final design.

Besides the monetary award, the Pitch It, Fab It event provides an intimate setting where creators can get “the interaction, the feedback, the validation of the idea,” said Lars Hasselblad Torres, the Generator’s executive director. “These are about helping very focused innovators move their ideas forward in a really constructive way.”

Pitch It, Fab It encourages experimentation as its primary goal, said UVM Vice President of Research Richard Galbraith. “And out of this might come some new ideas that are really useful.”

If the competition ultimately leads to a successful product and a company that creates local jobs, “wonderful,” Galbraith said. “We don’t necessarily expect everybody to get there.”

UVM launched its first Pitch It, Fab It event in February, when 10 inventors presented ideas and four received prizes worth a total of $3,500.

“We found that there are some really creative people in the Burlington area who come up with these ideas,” Clark said. “We were pleasantly surprised by the creativity and the passion of the inventors.”

One of first Pitch It, Fab It winners was Aaron Wisniewski, founder of Alice & the Magician, a young Burlington company that sells "edible" fragrances, made with natural ingredients that bartenders and chefs use to enhance their concoctions with scent instead of flavoring. They told Wisniewski that they wanted a visual effect when they used the fragrances, a way to “reinforce the multisensory experience,” he said.

Wisniewski brought the IMF staff some rudimentary sketches on notebook paper for a box-like dispensary. Late last month, he picked up the prototype.

“This is like Christmas for me,” he said.

On the side of the plain black box, he pressed a button that glowed blue, heating the fragrance chamber inside. He stuck a syringe in a hole on the top and drew in a cloud of vapor, then plunged it out into his hand, the way a bartender would spew the smoke into a martini glass. The aroma of burnt wood and grasses, which Wisniewski called Autumn Bonfire, wafted from his palm.

The IMF turned his vague idea into something beyond his wildest imagination, said the elated inventor.

“I just didn’t have the knowledge, the resources,” Wisniewski said. “I didn’t even know what questions to ask to get to the next step.”