DOUGLAS MERRIAM
Vibrant
Lem Hunter, president and CEO of the $238,000, seven-employee Albuquerque company, which uses a technology that relies on vibration to test airplane components:
I started an engineering design firm back in 1993. We did work for other companies and I started thinking, "Where can we get involved where we keep more of the revenue, where we have a proprietary position?" One of our customers was using this neat technology to test auto parts. It involves using vibration on a component and studying how the part responds to the vibration. I thought, "Where would that be most profitable and most fun to apply?"
I'm a pilot and an airplane guy. So I knew this technology could be applied in aerospace where the equipment is so valuable and the cost of [parts] failure is so high. Our customer owned the intellectual property and they were willing to license it to us for the aerospace market. We had a lot of work to do to prove [the value of this technology] to the aerospace world. Every 300 landings the landing gear on an airplane are taken apart and tested for wear. I carried out some lab experiments to confirm we had the ability to track changes in those parts over time. We spent $125,000 over the course of a year getting this up and rolling.
