Page 59: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2017)

Eric Birns

BIRNS, Inc.

Oxnard, CA, USA • http://birns.com

BIRNS, Inc. is an ISO 9001:2008 certi? ed leader in the de- Doria, to the search sign and manufacturing of high performance connectors, cus- for ? ight MH370 tom cable assemblies and lighting systems. Since 1954, the and the Concor- company has helped shape the face of innovation in the sub- dia salvage effort. sea industry with technologically advanced solutions trusted Today, BIRNS in the planet’s most demanding environments. products continue

During its six decade history, BIRNS lights and connector to provide illumi- systems have been trusted to provide support for the marine nation at greater industry’s highest pro? le projects: from Sealab and the Andria depths, and faster, more robust com- munication options for extreme ap- plications — from diving bells, decompression chambers, and security uses to manned submersibles, ROVs, AUVs and UUVs worldwide.

BIRNS launched its connector division in 1990, which soon yielded the popular BIRNS Millennium series, a 6km-rated high density dry mate line. This series can be used with sol- id or oil-? lled cables in straight or 90° con? gurations and is available in high and low voltage, coax, ? ber-optic and hy- brids of electro-coax, electro-optical and electro-opto-me- chanical formats.

The company has been illuminating the depths with power- ful, robust lighting systems for more than half a century, and in 2010 introduced innovative LED versions of lights for use in

BIRNS

PVHO, helmet and vehicle applications. In 2013, BIRNS de- veloped ? ber optic penetrators to add to its liens of ABS PDA certi? ed penetrators, which featured low insertion loss of < .2dB and high return loss of >35dB. Recently the company led the industry once again with the development of revolutionary new coax contacts for its BIRNS Millennium line with a max- imum insertion loss of 0.7 dB at signal frequencies to 3GHz, with an associated maximum SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) of 1.7:1. These incredible new coax contacts withstand open face hydrostatic pressure, provide incredible ease of assembly and connect directly to a standard MIL-STD-348 SMA connector.

BIRNS has provided industry-leading testing capabilities for its own precision-engineered lighting and connector product lines, and serves as an independent testing resource for the industry. The company’s custom-engineered hydrostatic pres- sure testing system has digital data recording capabilities and can be controlled remotely or via automatic programming. In it, technicians can simultaneously test three independent pres- sure circuits in six chambers at pressures up to 20,000 PSI (138 MPa), in fresh or salt water. BIRNS’ electrical test sys- tem was custom-designed by Kikusui and permits the simul- taneous testing of up to 16 electrical circuits, automatically, with up to 99 different programmable test sequences, at volt- ages up to 10kV, while subjected to hydrostatic/hydrodynamic pressure.

Falmouth Scienti? c www.marinetechnologynews.com

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