Industrial E-Commerce Goes to Sea - Aircraft Carrier 'Somewhere at Sea' Clicks On Web Site for Quick Delivery of Pressure Transducer
Cincinnati, OH, June 2006 - When you're at sea with your $4.5 billion aircraft carrier and you need a pressure transducer - quickly - for your list control system, where do you turn for 24/7 support? The Internet, of course.
Rob Matthes, president of Transducers Direct LLC and a Navy veteran himself, learned this while handling the 24-hour service calls for his company. A sailor aboard the Nimitz-class Abraham Lincoln called from "somewhere at sea" late on a recent Thursday night. The Navy man had found the pressure transducer he needed for the ship's list control system on the Transducers Direct web site, and he wanted one, plus a spare, shipped out post haste. "They needed a non-standard pressure port of 9/16", so we could not ship same day as we normally would, but we built the transducer on Friday based on their verbal order and waited for their final instructions while they worked out delivery issues at their end," Matthes said. "We got the formal order by email Saturday and later exchanged several calls and emails with them on their shipping requirements."
The specific product needed was Transducers Direct's stainless steel TDG 01 transducer configured for vacuum to 85 psi. It uses CVD sensing technology to produce measurements with ±0.15% linearity and provides a 0 10V or 4-20ma. output.
"On Monday we overnighted the products to Pearl Harbor, where they were put aboard a plane bound for the carrier," said Matthes. "It was really gratifying to us to provide a small piece of support to such a great warship in a pinch situation. We've supplied other ships in port a few times in the past, such the USS Champion and USS Devastator, where we upgraded them to new linear transducers for rudder control, but we've never been called by a ship at sea. We would have loved to learn more about how our transducer fits into the carrier's list control system, but it was almost as interesting to see just how powerful the Internet is."
For more information, visit the web site www.transducersdirect.com
Technical Contact
Rob Matthes
Transducers Direct LLC
264 Center St.
P.O. Box 162
Cincinnati, OH 45226
Tel: 513-871-4042
Rob_Matthes@Transducersdirect.com
www. transducersdirect.com
