SOME OF THE NEW PRODUCTS ON SHOW
Day 1: Innkeeper helps companies re-engage with durability and fatigue test equipment
Innkeeper
For Innkeeper, Automotive Testing Expo North America is the perfect platform to discuss its niche offering, which operations manager Bill Pagels described as a “Swiss Army Knife of testing tools”. This primarily includes a package of intuitive systems for conducting component durability and fatigue tests.
Pagels said that the company does not claim to have bleeding-edge technology; its USP is that it can help developers reconnect with equipment. Owner Kevin Kretschmann started the company nearly 20 years ago. Both he and Pagels came from the product testing and test equipment build environments, a background that has enabled the two to understand the issues found on the floor of Tier 1 and 2 companies supplying components and subassemblies.
“With the staffing challenges facing companies today and the ever-increasing pressure to reduce product development timelines, there is a need for more staff at these locations to accomplish a large number of tasks. Also, companies continue to be consolidated, and established test equipment is moved not only from state to state but between countries. Original owners’ manuals are lost, the operational skills are lost and the end-control systems need to be retrofitted,” Pagels explained.
“Our larger, big-box competitors have amazing products, but when you need a modular data acquisition and control system that can be modified for the task at hand, we have both the product and the services to support them. The InnControl product is based on LabView software and the closed-loop control system is based on Delta Motion hardware.”
He said that Innkeeper supports developers in re-engaging with their equipment, retrofitting controls and putting systems in place that help to consolidate the testing process. “We have a multipurpose tool and excel with customer support.”
To learn more about Innkeeper’s offering – a highlight of which is its Axis servo controller – head to Booth 16020.