PORT RICHEY, Fla. (Sept. 30, 2004) – The NASA-funded Space Alliance Technology Outreach program (SATOP) has helped family-owned Lumedyne, Inc. on the path to saving two of the company’s most popular products after a key component was discontinued.

Lumedyne is a world leader in the creation of highest-quality, portable flash systems for professional photographers. The flash units are hand-built in the company’s 7,000-square-foot factory and shipped to authorized dealers around the world.

The company faced a serious challenge when a high speed switch called a thyristor, a key component in Lumedyne’s two most popular lines of battery packs, was discontinued by the manufacturer. Lumedyne engineering manager Angelo Economos immediately began investigating acceptable replacement thyristors, but had no success.

Luckily for Economos, the Pasco Economic Development Council’s monthly manufacturers council lunch meeting featured a presentation from Chris Gilfriche, SATOP Sr. Program Engineer. Economos brought the circuit board in question to the luncheon and showed it to Gilfriche. “This was an ideal example of how our manufacturers council lunches are designed to provide useful, real-world information to benefit local companies,” said John Walsh, PEDC vice president.

SATOP is able to provide free engineering assistance to small businesses through the donation of time and expertise from 49 Space Alliance Partners. Lumedyne’s challenge was paired with David Gerber, an electrical engineer with SATOP partner United Space Alliance (USA) in Houston.

After running into the same problems that Economos had encountered with replacement thyristors, Gerber decided that he needed to travel to Florida to see in person what was happening with the circuit in question.

“This was a unique situation – to have an Alliance Partner engineer actually travel from another state to work on a request for technical assistance,” said SATOP program engineer Ryan Greenough. “David really went above and beyond the call of duty to solve Lumedyne’s challenge.”

Working with Economos, Gerber determined that more capacitance needed to be added to the circuit in order for a replacement thyristor to work. By the end of the day, after adding additional capacitance, the circuit was working with the new thyristor. Economos is now working on fine-tuning the circuit’s rapid triggering capabilities.

“It was extremely helpful, not only to have help from an engineer with David’s talents and experience, but also to actually have him here working on this challenge,” said Economos. “It was the difference between finding a solution on paper and finding a real-world solution.

“SATOP is a great resource to have available to a small business like ours,” he said. “It’s reassuring to know that you can have aerospace engineering expertise on your side if you need it.”