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Manufacturing Magic
EMX, INc. constructs thermal systems and cameras which show what the eye can't see

by Anne Straub
Brevard Technical Journal

EMX, Inc. technician Austin Roney assembles housings for EMX Inc.'s thermal camera product used for military security and perimeter surveillance. Photo by Tim Shortt, © 2003.

Increased emphasis on security in recent years has changed the way many companies do business. At EMX Inc., it’s why the company does business.

“We’ve been in homeland security since before people could spell homeland security,” said Tim Arion, president and CEO of the Melbourne company.

EMX makes thermal cameras, primarily for security purposes. Navy installations, search-and-rescue boats and oil fields are some of the places EMX systems are found.

Thermal systems use heat differentials to distinguish objects. A body will be visible on a landscape, but so will trees and structures. Those objects absorb heat during the day and cool at different rates, so a thermal camera will pick up those forms. Light is irrelevant; a thermal picture looks the same, day or night.

“It’s truly like magic. You’re seeing in a different spectrum of light than you’re used to,” said Erik Zipperer, a retired sergeant major who worked with EMX equipment while with U.S. Special Operations at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “Everything you’ve learned about hiding from someone changes.”

Founded in 1989, EMX began growing rapidly in the past five years, after becoming an original equipment manufacturer for Raytheon Co. in 1998. EMX operates as a systems integrator, packaging Raytheon components into various configurations. Revenues that totaled $340,000 in 1999 had grown to $2.4 million by 2001. That growth landed the company at No. 132 on the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 list of fastest-growing firms. It also ranked No. 4 in the Florida High-Tech Corridor Technology Fast 50, which covers Central Florida.

This EMX camera positioned at Ford Island, near the Arizona Monumnet at Pearl Harbor, uses thermal imagery, allowing security surveillance at night or in harsh environments. Inset photo shows troop movements in the cover of darkness. Photo by EMX, Inc., © 2003.

EMX sales held steady in 2002, despite the economic slowdown. Arion expects growth to return and forecasts $6 million in annual sales within a few years. To accommodate the spurt, EMX is doubling its space, moving to a 6,000-square-foot facility on Dow Road in July. Arion, who now owns all the company’s stock, also is looking for investors to provide the cash flow needed for the anticipated boom.

The source of the growth: “Weapons-related products will take us there,” Arion said.

In particular, he has high hopes for the company’s newest product, a thermal imager that attaches to a semiautomatic handgun. A video transmitter sends the image to a box on the user’s belt, then to a monocular display worn over an eye. Wearing the apparatus, a gunman could point the gun around a corner and shoot an enemy without exposing the gunman’s body to vulnerability.

“I believed the guys who were running around the caves in Afghanistan would be a natural” for the device, Arion said. Instead, interest is coming primarily from law enforcement agencies.

He blames tight budgets for the lack of defense sales. But Arion, himself a Navy veteran, believes the military eventually will buy the device and propel it to 20 percent of the company’s business.

Another weapons product has scored sales to the Mexican government this year. The thermal camera works with a mounted gun and sends an image to the user’s monocular display. Night vision intensifies the image to improve the user’s view, and a dazzler blinds the enemy, thwarting attempts to locate and destroy the gun. Meanwhile, the operator views the image through the remote display and operates the gun with a joystick device, staying out of harm’s way.

EMX is positioned to grow its military side through a General Services Administration contract, which means the government can buy directly from the company without putting jobs out for bid. The company also enjoys a reputation for being able to respond to customers’ needs quickly, Zipperer said, a valued asset in a culture that can get bogged down in bureaucracy.

The company’s main product is a surveillance system designed for harsh environments and used for security in a variety of locations. EMX cameras look out over the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, as well as other U.S. Navy sites along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. The company’s products are used at Guantanamo Bay, where al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are held, and at the Vieques Island training site off Puerto Rico.

“Every place there’s a hot spot – Korea, Bosnia, Vieques – we’ve got stuff there,” Arion said.

Customs officials in the United Kingdom use handheld EMX units to detect drug traffic on the English Channel. Previously, officials could hear people talking and boats being rowed in the water off the cliffs of Dover, but were unable to see any activity from land. Thermal cameras see through the fog well enough to detect smugglers and at a much lower cost than operating boats. British officials have told Arion that the money they save in fuel in one night is enough to pay for a camera, he said.

Other customers include nuclear power operators, prisons, and a market Arion tags as another source of potential growth: oil fields. British Petroleum, for example, uses EMX cameras in part of its sprawling operation in Colombia to provide perimeter protection at night.

Not all EMX cameras end up doing duty looking out for bad guys. EMX also caters to the sport-fishing industry, where players with plenty of disposable income can invest close to $10,000 for a thermal camera for their boat. “The name of the game is to leave one tournament and get to the next as quickly as possible,” said Arion. The thermal imagery allows boaters to travel at night.

For more information, see www.emx-inc.com.