Ideal Aerosmith

Richtsmeier Named One of Region's Top Young Professionals

Jim Richtsmeier, Senior Vice President of Business Growth and Technology at Ideal Aerosmith, was recently named to Prairie Business' "20 Under 40: Listing of the region's top young professionals." When asked about this accomplishment, Jim stated, "It is truly an honor to be recognized in this manner, but more importantly, I think it says a lot about the team at Ideal Aerosmith that has made this possible."

Practical Problem Solving (PPS) Training

PPS Training

In keeping with Ideal's goal of continuous improvement in the areas of reliability, quality, on-time delivery, and reduction in cost, over twenty Ideal employees participated in a three-day course on Practical Problem Solving. This course was held at Ideal's facility in East Grand Forks. With the assistance of Enterprise Minnesota, we were fortunate to bring in the founder of the Practical Problem Solving course David Meier, president of Lean Associates, and an internationally recognized consultant, trainer, and author. David's depth of experience comes through ten years of training and mentorship by problem solving experts.

Over the three days we learned the four step process to Practical Problem Solving. As part of the training, we selected real-life problems within the company and moved through the Practical Problem Solving process in teams. This allowed us to have hands-on experience and understand the theory behind the process. Jim Stevenson, Integration and Service Manager, stated, "The time spent to introduce this process to Ideal’s technical staff was extremely beneficial. We will continue to use the Practical Problem Solving process to identify and solve issues as a team, which in turn will benefit our customers."

John Mohn Named President of Ideal Aerosmith

Ideal Aerosmith is pleased to announce the promotion of John Mohn to President of Ideal Aerosmith effective January 1, 2010. He replaces Lonnie C. Rogers, who has served as President since 1994. Mr. Rogers will join Greg D. Owens as Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors, providing strategic guidance and oversight to Ideal.

John Mohn

"Ideal is well positioned to make a major move in the test industry. We've built a strong employee base of industry veterans who have a reputation for providing top quality products and services to our domestic and international customers. This team is positioned to deliver integrated solutions to numerous industry partners as never before. Our team is strong in all areas and has the ability to integrate all aspects of our business into one focused solution," said Mohn.

Mr. Mohn joined the company in 2005 as Chief Financial Officer, and most recently served as Executive Vice President. He has a diverse background in finance, consulting and general management of companies across the US. Prior to joining Ideal, he spent 16 years with the Coors Distributing Company, as well as 6 years operating an independent business consulting firm.

Mr. Mohn, a North Dakota native, graduated from the University of North Dakota College of Business and earned his Masters of Science in Business Administration from the University of Northern Colorado. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and serves on the Altru Health Systems Investment and Audit committees.

Ideal Aerosmith provides cutting-edge testing solutions to many major aerospace, defense, automotive, and oil & gas entities around the world. Ideal is a leading supplier of aerospace test equipment along with precision inertial guidance test systems, rotational rate tables and centrifuges, and high-dynamic flight test tables. It also provides aerospace test engineering services, Automated Test Equipment system engineering, and quality contract manufacturing services.

The company is headquartered in East Grand Forks, MN and maintains offices in Grand Forks, ND; Menlo Park, CA; Phoenix, AZ; and Pittsburgh, PA.

New AERO 4000™ Features for Enhanced Centrifuge Operation

AERO 4000 Controller Systems: GUI

The Ideal Aerosmith AERO 4000™ Motion Controller is approaching the 5-year mark since its release and we continue to upgrade the system to improve its functionality and ease of use. One such improvement has been our recent software upgrade to provide advanced features specific to centrifuge operation.

These features include:

• User selectable units including Degrees, RPMs, or force in Gs
• Integrated safety interlocks including enclosure door sensors, vibration sensors, and motion limits
• Built-in arm positioning functions to facilitate easy access to payloads and counter weights
• Manual centrifuge control allowing for stationary and in-motion velocity and acceleration control
• Advanced MotionFile™ control including:
• • Non-zero starting velocity allowing the centrifuge to start the dynamic portion of a profile while in motion
  • External discrete start signal allows for test synchronization with external systems
  • Stand-alone profile editor allowing users the convenience to define profile files from their office PC
  • Graphical preview of profile to visually model velocity and acceleration changes over time
  • A minimum of 1 gigabyte of on-board non-volatile storage devoted to user generated profiles, allowing for thousands of article-specific centrifuge profiles

Ideal listened to centrifuge customers who had been using analog or real-time computer host interfaces to send rate commands to their centrifuge controller in order for it to follow the "spin curves" designed by their engineers. While still supporting this older type of interface, Ideal enhanced the AERO 4000™ so that it can internally store user's entire spin-curve data files (multiple profiles) as an AERO 4000 MotionFile™, and then "play it back", by name, upon command. This capability is unique in the inertial testing marketplace and has applications beyond just centrifuges: for example, multi-axis MotionFiles™ can be used for open-loop baseline testing, as well as demonstration motions on large, multi-axis, hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) simulators.