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New Products Conception

The development of a new product is the result of the long process. Every year, we take part in 5-6 international conferences on particle accelerators and their beam instrumentation, in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Often, we present a publication about our latest developments. However, the main purpose for taking part is elsewhere; we identify new accelerator proposals that pose new, unsolved, instrumentation challenges.
The aim of our company is to create new instruments to answer these challenges. We propose those engineers and scientists who encounter these challenges to join an informal work group. We take an active part in many such work groups. This all happens way before the actual development of a new instrument.
These work groups are information exchange networks. We meet at the occasion of international conferences. In-between, we keep in touch by e-mails and phone. Larger development projects are sometimes organized around dedicated web site. Such is the case with the muons collider project which may get built many years from now.
This is how new instruments come to file. They are born from perceived needs of future users. When these instruments appear feasible, we get to work. Our development effort is entirely self-financed.
Every instrument we made is the result of the such collaborations. In this process, we were involved with more than 50 research institutes worldwide. The names that pop up often are; Berkeley, Tsukuba, Desy, Cern, Cornell, Kamigori, Los Alamos, Frascati, also Orsay, Slac, Esrf, Aarhus, Riken and Brookhaven.
When the prototypes are ready, we ship them for testing to many of the labs which participated in the conceptual phase. They express criticisms that help us improve the products. Often, they publish the test results at the next large international conference. This gives exposure to our development.
It brings us new customers.

Development

ManufacturingOur Saint Genis Pouilly workshop is well equipped with production machinery and instruments. This allows us to manufacture and test everything in-house, except printed circuits boards etching and integrated circuits. Some operations are subcontracted after the process has been developed in house. Our quality control is extremely strict. It is largely automated, to avoid human errors. We preserve indefinitely all construction parameters of every instrument we make. We can recalibrate or repair any instrument, even those we made 20 years ago.CalibrationAs is done by the best-known instrument makers, our standards and calibration function is integrated in our production process. It is present at every step of the production. Our instruments are checked at frequent intervals against primary standard transfer instruments. They are recalibrated as often as needed. 
We specialize in ultra-low-noise analog electronics design in DC...3GHz range. We combine excellent knowledge of cobalt-based amorphous magnetic alloys annealing processes. We use the best available instruments from manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Anritsu, Tektronix, Rohde-Schwartz, Ifr-Marconi.
We design schematics, simulate performance and draw layouts with computer-based tools. Exceptional performance is always expected from our circuits. Signal-to-noise ratio > 140dB and linearity > 11 octaves are usual demands. Those performances cannot be simulated by computer. They require many successive generations of prototypes. Magnetic sensors also demand extreme performance from magnetic alloys; Response up to 2Ghz and very low Barkhausen noise.
Development of a new instrument requires 2-3 years of work, which comes in addition to another 2-3 years for conception. Thus, a new instrument typically requires 4-6 years of work, entirely self-financed.