Lamphier: Super sensitive seismic sensors boon for global oil exploration

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Micralyne R&D engineer Josh Krabbe is one of the bright lights who is helping the local manufacturer of micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) win new business.

Photograph by: Candace Elliott , Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - Micralyne has suffered more than its share of bumps and bruises over the past two years.

After losing a key customer ? one that generated 40 per cent of its total revenues ? to an unidentified industry rival, Micralyne was forced to seek protection from creditors in March, 2012.

But under acting CEO Mike Ciprick, the Edmonton-based high-tech firm ? a leader in the design and manufacture of tiny Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, or MEMS ? is bouncing back.

After aggressively pursuing new business, company revenues jumped 30 per cent over the past year, Ciprick says. And on Wednesday, Micralyne won court approval to emerge from creditor protection.

With its balance sheet issues resolved, the 15-year-old U of A spinoff, which employs about 100 engineers and other staff at its 55,000-square-foot head office complex in the Edmonton Research Park, is back in growth mode.

?Thanks to the efforts of our highly talented employees, current customers and our stakeholders, we have enjoyed a very strong past year and our business has stabilized,? said Ciprick in an email. ?Productivity is at an all-time high, so I?d say we?re in good shape.?

Micralyne?s optical switches, specialized sensors and lab-on-a-chip devices ? which are so small, they?re measured in microns, or thousandths of a millimetre ? are used by a wide range of Fortune 500 companies in such industries as telecommunications, automotive, aerospace and life sciences.

But Micralyne is especially excited about the growth potential of a new-generation digital seismic sensor, or geophone, that it?s developing for the multi-billion-dollar global oil and gas exploration industry.

A prototype is currently being tested by a major international energy services firm, explains Joshua Krabbe, a brilliant young R&D engineer who heads up Micralyne?s four-person geophone product development team.

?As far as our client knows, this new digital geophone is the most sensitive in the world, with the lowest (background) noise floor. We?re now working on finishing the prototyping and starting a ramp-up with pilot manufacturing,? he says.

Krabbe, a lanky competitive cyclist with the Edmonton Road and Track Club who joined Micralyne in 2011, just days after completing a Masters degree in electrical engineering at the U of A, says he?s excited about applying his scientific smarts to make it easier to find new oil deposits, while potentially generating millions of dollars of new revenues for Micralyne.

?Our client is qualifying the new-generation geophone as something that they?re going to purchase in mass quantities ? hopefully, hundreds of thousands or maybe even a million parts per year ? and we hope to get it into production within the next year? he says.

?So we?re starting a ramp to production soon but it takes time. We have to control the processes to make sure they?re repeatable, because the client will only want to buy a million parts if they?re all identical or standardized. I?d say that?s what I?m good at ? figuring out how you can actually build something like this, using these real technical skills.?

Krabbe and his R&D team have had to overcome some huge challenges to make the new digital geophone economically viable, and cost-competitive with the cheaper analog sensors that have traditionally been used in energy exploration.

?What we?ve done over the last 18 months is take the product to the next level and really cut the cost, and at the same time take a step forward in sensitivity. So if you can make it more sensitive and cost less, our client is going to make a killing because they can squeeze all the analog sensors out of the market,? he says.

The key to slashing production costs? Krabbe and his team have devised a way to simultaneously produce 502 vacuum-sealed parts per silicon wafer ? the thin slice of semiconductor material that?s used in the fabrication of integrated circuits ? rather than one part at a time.

?The whole process is now done on 502 parts at a time, so that?s how we?re going to save all this money: by building 502 of them, chopping them up right at the very end and then selling them, instead of chopping them up halfway through and paying employees to move them through the production process one at a time.?

Once in the hands of clients, Micralyne?s product will be installed in a device that?s shaped like a tent peg, with electronic controls attached, and the devices will be strung out on grids at surface, and connected by cables.

By studying the echoes registered by the grid from vibrations created at ground level, geologists can study the structure and location of underground hydrocarbon deposits.

So if the product is a success, what?s next for Krabbe?

At the tender age of 27, he says it?s too early to say. He may start his own business, or he may stay at Micralyne for the next 30 years.

Either way, he?s got the kind of smarts this city?s burgeoning high-tech sector desperately needs to nurture ? and keep.

glamphier@edmontonjournal.com

? Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

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Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F264/~3/lN613dMGLHU/story.html

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