Working in a Vacuum : Technology: Computers, reversible motors allow firms like O.C.’s Airlink International to give new twists to pneumatic tube systems.
Electronic mail traffic might be backed up bumper-to-bumper along the information highway, but a handful of companies are finding plenty of room to maneuver in a decidedly old-fashioned conduit--pneumatic tubes.
“Pneumatic tubes are an old technology that’s new again,” said Eric Berge, president of Airlink International in Orange, which manufactures tube systems for commercial and industrial applications. “There are lots of things that you can’t send through e-mail.”
Drafty and noisy pneumatic systems of yesteryear carried little more than paper and small bundles of cash. But driven by precise motors and guided by computerized controls, newer systems are increasingly likely to carry many other things.
The devices use canisters to carry objects through tube systems that are hidden behind walls or in the ceilings of buildings. Motors create an air vacuum that carries canisters through the network of tubes at speeds of up to 30 feet per second.
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico uses a tube system to carry irradiated materials to a testing laboratory. United Air Lines plans to use a 7,100-foot tube system to shuttle aircraft parts to passenger gates when Denver’s huge new airport opens, which is expected next spring. A Southern California church group uses an Airlink tube system to carry bingo game proceeds to an office for safekeeping.
Pneumatic tubes date back more than 100 years, to a time when businesses both in Paris and New York moved paperwork between nearby buildings, using manually operated bellows to create the needed vacuum. Manufacturers of the systems subsequently used electric motors to create the vacuum needed to move the lightweight canisters, but most systems remained relatively simple.
During the 1980s, the industry harnessed the power of computers and reversible motors. Computers allow manufacturers to install sophisticated systems with dozens of stations. Old systems had to have two tubes, but new systems use reversible motors that make it possible to send and retrieve canisters through the same tube.
The industry--about half a dozen manufacturers, including Orange-based Airlink--now generates slightly less than $100 million in total annual revenue, up from about $45 million a decade ago, said Charlie Kegley, a vice president at Denver-based TransLogic Corp., which manufactures systems used mainly by large hospitals.
Airlink said it expects to generate about $12 million in 1994 revenue, up from about $1 million a decade ago. Berge created the company in the mid-1970s to make low-end systems, but since has expanded into more complex, computer-controlled systems, which have greater profit margins.
The simple systems are increasingly popular in warehouse-style stores and other retail operations where managers have to move large amounts of cash from registers to back offices. “We initially estimated (the retail niche) as a $5-million or $6-million market,” Berge said. “But we were way under.”
Absent the computerized bells and whistles, the basic physics are unchanged. Said Kegley: “We’re still using the same principles of controlling air to move objects.”
Basic pneumatic systems cost about $2,000. But prices vary for more complex systems that use computers to route canisters to dozens of different locations and that can track shipments as they make their way through the building.
Tube manufacturers created new markets in the 1980s when they opted to “start to move away from moving paper to moving things,” Kegley said. “We started to give people the confidence level needed to use tubes to carry something other than paper and money.”
United’s system, which was designed by TransLogic, moves jet aircraft parts at up to 25 feet per second, which is fast enough to produce dramatic operating cost reductions.
“Without the pneumatic tubes, we’d have to use trucks to physically drive over to where the parts are,” United spokesman Joe Hopkins said. “But that simply won’t work at the new Denver airport, which is twice the size of Manhattan Island.”
Manufacturers actually throttle systems down for hospital use because blood products can separate when canisters fly around corners at high rates of speed. “It’s called hemolysis,” Berge said. “And it’s a great concern to hospital administrators.”
Speed also is a potential danger when it comes time to stop. “Stations have been destroyed by careless employees,” Berge said. “You have to remember that even a five-pound bag of cash is going to do some damage when it’s moving at 30 feet per second.”
There’s no big secret, Berge said, to making canisters stop. “We bleed off the air about six feet before the station,” Berge said. “When the canister hits the column of dead air, it slows to almost a dead stop immediately. It’s just like a parachute.”
Computers and reversible motors allowed the industry to develop reliable systems that use automatic sensors to track deliveries, an important element in hospitals, for example, where shipments carry drugs or laboratory tests. But Kegley said the “largest bump in the market” came during the 1980s when hospitals started adding new tube systems to cut rising operating costs.
Long Beach Memorial Medical Center is using a state-of-the-art system designed by Airlink International to move specimens to a central laboratory in the basement and drugs from its pharmacy. The system, with nearly 80 stations, speeds deliveries throughout the seven-story building.
“We had tube stations 15 years ago, but they were so unreliable that we just abandoned them,” said Pathology Department Director Terry White. “The old tubes are still there in the walls.”
After the new system was installed, the hospital eliminated costly satellite laboratories and pharmacies scattered about the hospital and consolidated the functions in central locations.
TransLogic, which concentrates on complex systems for the hospital market, expects continued growth, Kegley said, because less than a third of the nation’s 3,000 larger hospitals have modern pneumatic tube systems.
Berge, 50, thinks the pneumatic tube industry might benefit from a name change.
“The phone companies insist on putting us in the Yellow Pages under pneumatic tubes, which nobody knows how to spell, much less know what pneumatic means,” Berge said. “It’s a real frustration, believe me.”
Berge is lobbying phone directories to create a “message systems” listing for companies like Airlink.
“Ironically, one of our biggest selling points has been the warehouse clubs,” Berge said. “We get four or five calls each month from someone who saw the tubes at a checkout counter but didn’t know where to get one.”
New Spin on an Old Idea
Pneumatic tubing systems use air to route delivery carriers from point to point within a building. Developed over a century ago, the original systems were pumped with a large bellows. New systems, like those manufactured by Orange-based Airlink International, use reversible motors, computers and electronic sensors. Carrier: Carrier moves 25-30 feet per second. Send-receive station: Light panel indicates whether network is free for sending. Red light means sender must wait until incoming carrier arrives before sending. Computer: Tracks carriers, monitors air pressure. Electronic sensors: Tell computer where carrier is within system. Diverters: Route carrier to proper destination and can hold carriers to allow priority deliveries. Air bleed-off valve: Located near send/receive station. Reduces air pressure to slow carrier down before landing. Blower: Motor blows air or creates suction for two-way travel.
How It Works
1) Sender fills carrier with item to be sent--such as cash, paperwork or aircraft parts--and places inside station door.
2) Sender selects station destination.
3) Carrier makes a soft landing at receiving station.
Source: Airlink International; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
Airlink International
* Headquarters: Orange * Founded: 1976 * Business: Designs, manufactures and installs pneumatic tube delivery systems * President: Eric Berge * Estimated 1994 revenue: $12 million Source: Airlink International
