Innovative Non-Destructive Testing Solutions
To provide innovative, cost effective, NonDestructive
In-spection solutions within the Aerospace industry and the
NonDestructive Test community in general.
We value our reputation for integrity, innovation, and
com-mitment to quality and our continuing goal is to be an
ap-plication leader within the NonDestructive Test industry.
MISSION
Militaries
US Air Force, US Navy, US Coast Guard, US Marine Corps, US Army, Canadian Forces, Royal Australian Air Force, New Zea-land Defence, Belgian Military Supply, et. al.
Manufacturers
Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, ATK, Bombardier, Cessna, Bell Helicopter, Teledyne-Brown, Univer-sal Technologies, Vought Aircraft, General Dynamics, Hawker-Beechcraft, Hellenic Aerospace, Lear-Siegler, Raytheon, SAIC, Siemens, Sikorsky
COMPANY
For over 30 years, VM Products has supplied the US Military with state of the art electromagnetic test equipment for testing airframes and aircraft components. The company has a 30 year reputation for simple, reliable solutions and good customer support.
From its founding by two Air Force retirees who sought to lever-age their combined sixty-five years of aircraft maintenance and testing experience to provide practical Eddy Current probes, the attention of the company has been focused on applying hard earned experience to new problems.
The company expanded from the manufacture of probes with the development of techniques for precision machining of
sim-ulated cracks using Electrostatic Discharge Machining. This has led to VM Products pre-eminence in manufacture of Eddy Current test standards for the Aerospace industry.
In the last five years VM Products has intentionally assembled a dedicated team of technical personnel second to none in the industry. This engineering team has spearheaded aggressive growth into new markets and applications through applied re-search and development. Contract R&D has become the major new growth area for the company as personnel specialize in the development of entire test systems including instrumenta-tion and robotics.
Research Institutions
Iowa State Center for NDE, Sandia Labs, NASA, FAA, Electric Power Research Institute
Airlines
Alaska Air, ATA, Caribbean Air, Cape Air, Continental Airlines, Comair, Emirates Airline, Embraer Aircraft, Ethiopian Airlines, Evergreen Airlines, Korean Air, Saudi Arabian Airlines, TED
Maintenance Facilities
Columbia Helicopter, L-3 Communications, Dyncorp, QinetiQ, Indianapolis Jet Center
CUSTOMERS
VM Products’ customers are a veritable Who’s-Who of the Aerospace
com-munity worldwide. Airframe manufacturers and their customers, both military
and commercial come to us for test solutions. Some examples include:
PEOPLE
The right people are everything and for the people of VM Products, Reputation is Everything. Our key technical personnel represent 110 years of combined NDT experience and have been specifically selected for their areas of expertise and reputation within the industry. Most of the specific research brought to VM Products is due to the customers’ former experience with various employees. The continuing double digit increase of sales is due primarily to word of mouth and reputation of the people of VM Products.
The company’s founder, “Tap” Tapia is an icon within the military NDE community, having started an Air Force NDE career in 1958. To carry on the torch, he selected a new genera-tion of engineers to build on this foundagenera-tion by adding their own experiences.
The company has always specialized in providing practical solutions developed by people who have “worked in the trenches” and know the everyday business of their customers. The team now includes electrical and mechanical engineers, and a physicist as well as applications personnel. These are all innovators with many years of experience and recog-nized for their accomplishments.
Supporting the technical staff is a team of highly skilled craftsmen to produce consistently high quality products. These dedicated, motivated and loyal employees have been chosen primarily as people who take pride in their work and responsibility to provide quality prod-ucts second to none.
TECHNOLOGY
VM Products core competencies center around Eddy Current testing and its required equip-ment. Areas of expertise include the development of test instrumentation, material han-dling/manipulating & positioning equipment including robotic controls, as well as coil and cable design.
Manufacturing technology includes CNC machining of all types. Most equipment is manu-factured from raw materials. VM Products has a very heavy investment in high end tool-ing capable of productool-ing precision parts. A particular specialty is Electrostatic Discharge Machining, which is used to produce a variety of specialty products ranging from simulated cracks to precision miniature titanium gears.
PRODUCTS
Eddy Current Probes exist in as many forms as there are ap-plications. VM Products was founded to produce simple hand-held probes with a coil at the tip of a tube protruding from a handle. These coils may now be found in many forms from an intricate fixture that slides a precision coil along the edge of a rotor blade to probes that are molded to fit the bead seat of an aircraft wheel. The catalog includes thousands of standard products and their variations.
The company has recently diversified into probes for testing heat exchanger tubing, pipelines and welded structures. The R&D group is constantly engaged in producing new designs for additional applications.
Eddy Current Standards are used to set up equipment for proper testing and ensure equipment sensitivity. They are test blocks of material with standardized defects machined into them, which are intended to replicate the cracking or corrosion the test is expected to find.
VM Products pioneered the use of Electrostatic Discharge Ma-chining to produce very fine simulated cracks in test standards. As with the probes, these standards are found in as many forms as there are applications. They may simulate multilayer struc-tures with embedded cracking, a series of variously sized rivet holes with cracks, or many combinations thereof.
The company’s reputation with this product has made it the pre-eminent supplier for aerospace Eddy Current standards with cus-tomers worldwide bringing custom designs for manufacture.
Specialized Test Equipment is the fastest growing product line for the company. Based on the reputation of our technical personnel in electromagnetic R&D, Eddy Current instrumenta-tion, electrical and mechanical engineering and system devel-opment, customers come for test equipment applied to their particular application.
VM Products provides Project Engineering and Systems Engi-neering as well as Electrical, Electronic, and Mechanical En-gineering services. Application areas have branched out from airframe and aerospace component testing to testing of heat exchangers and pipelines.
VM Products breadth of expertise extends from embedded in-strumentation, robotics and remote control test equipment to precision test coils from .04” to 36” in diameter and machining of miniature precision gears.
VM Products’ engineers have leveraged on the company’s ex-perience with precision EDM work to produce a variety of cus-tom products including precision-machined components, which would be difficult if not impossible to manufacture otherwise. Mechanical systems, for example include miniature precision gearing with high accuracy profiles, which may be easily cut from titanium to produce low inertia, precision gear trains. At the other end of the size scale has been the development and production of robotic pipeline testers with embedded in-strumentation that operate over fiber optic tethers over a mile in length in pipelines up the 36 inches in diameter.
address::
