Page 47: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2010)

www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 47

Birns, Inc.

Tel: 805-487-5393

Email: abrown@ birns.com www.birns.com

CEO/President: Eric Birns

Director of Comms: Amy Brown

QA Manager: Seth Everett

General Manager: Keith Gear

Square Footage: 11,400

Testing Capabilities: In 2010 BIRNS implemented an enhanced new 9 tank high performance hydrostatic pressure testing system, with a range of vessels rated to 20,000, 10,000, 5,000 and 1,000 psi, which provides an enhanced, streamlined, efficient means to test a wide range of products for both rigorous safety and demanding performance requirements. Customers are now offered a turnkey pro- gram with costs to include ABS approval for orders moving forward.

Number of Employees: 25

BIRNS is an ISO: 9001 2008-certified leader in the design and manufacture of high performance lights, con- nectors, penetrators and custom cable assemblies for deep ocean, marine, military and nuclear power applications.

With more than a half century of industry experience,

BIRNS has a legacy of contributions in emerging tech- nologies for some of the harshest environments on earth.

Renowned since its inception in 1954 for developing solu- tions for exceptionally rigorous applications, its products have widespread oceanic deep submergence and diving decompression acceptance—in fact, 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of BIRNS’ ongoing partnership with the US

Navy. Its products are trusted in 83% of the US nuclear power facilities and many others worldwide. In the 1970s,

BIRNS produced lights to meet the extreme depth appli- cations of the offshore oil and deep-sea exploration indus- try—some tested to an equivalent depth of 42,000 FSW (13 km). In 1978, the BlackBIRN self-contained under- water Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI) system allowed single divers to detect oil leaks or welds defects in under- water steel structures. The BIRNS Snooper, a 3km-rated 3200K light, is durable and dependable, with many from the 1960s are still in use today. BIRNS introduced an advanced oil-filled connector adaptor for the US Navy that solved the risk of cut tubing with underwater oil- filled cables for deep submergence ROVs—a unique dou- ble-ferrule electro-hydraulic connector adaptor system.

BIRNS is the only company offering this level of sophisti- cation in oil-filled cable connector technology. BIRNS’ products undergo rigors like open-faced saltwater hydro- static pressure testing, and the company’s sophisticated, high performance connector systems achieve the lowest optical losses (>.2 dB at depths of 6 Km) in the industry.

Recently, BIRNS developed its BIRNS Millennium con- nector range with both multi- and single- mode optical fibers, and high voltage ( 3.6Kv) and low voltage ( 600v) conductors – delivering huge bandwidth and power for extreme depth applications — allowing transmission of real time data for subsea observatories, towed data acqui- sition devices and ROV projects. The typical loss recorded for a cable assembly of the series is <1dB, yet it can carry high and low voltages — thus delivering power, control signals and high bandwidth telemetry both to and from a device for military and industrial applications. In 2010

BIRNS spearheaded further initiatives in its industry-lead- ing trend of miniaturization and hybridization in a series of affordable, short lead time offerings that are the most advanced cutting edge connectors on the market. It intro- duced a new line of standardized electro-optical hybrid connectors as a supplement to its wide range of custom connector lines, including the standard hybrid BIRNS

Millennium 3T series (also capable of handling high volt- age ( 3.6Kv) conductors), in which users can specify up to 31 electrical wires and up to 10 optical fibers, and the standard hybrid BIRNS Millennium 3O, with a single optical fiber and up to 10 electrical wires, allowing unpar- alleled versatile high performance connectivity.

BIRNS just expanded its lines of commercial diving and subsea lighting products to include new, innovative LED options in the BIRNS “L” series—chamber lights and hel- met and ROV work lights—all with 40,000 hour lamp lives and brilliant LED illumination.

Eric Birns

Birns standard Hybrid Electro Optical Connector.

MTR 100