A light bulb idea for Nortek: technology firm sees new market in aviation industry.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NORTH BAY

For Nortek Computers, it always helps to have an edge.

The 25-employee North Bay technology company has made its mark retrieving lost data from people's crippled hard drives. Now it has a new specialty.

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Last fall, they launched a new service to repair and refurbish high resolution flat panel display monitors for the global aviation industry, specifically the screens used by air traffic controllers.

They bill it as a cheaper way to extend the life of these high-end monitors used in aviation, military and industrial applications.

Since 2001, national aviation associations around the world have been replacing their old television screen-style CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors with LCD's (liquid crystal displays).

After about eight years of constantly running, or 40,000 hours, these monitors start to deteriorate. The cold cathode florescent lamps (CCFL) eventually start to burn out and there are no replacements available anywhere in the marketplace.

"As they come up to that time, they're all failing," says Troy Prior, Nortek's support service manager. "That's our opportunity."

To buy a brand new monitor costs between $35,000 and $50,000.

For less than five per cent of buying a new one, Nortek refits and recalibrates them with new bulbs and balances the light to ensure there are no dark patches across the screen.

This new line of work started with one of their customers, aerospace manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin. Nortek was handling their tape drive repairs and Lockheed asked if they did LCD monitor work.

Never turning an opportunity to please a big customer, Nortek president Bob Everest obliged.

But is was a problem to source new CCFL tubes because the existing OEM (original equipment manufacturer) wouldn't sell any to Nertek, so they had to engineer a solution.

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