For Immediate Release Enabling Thermal Technologies Since 1970 Thermacore Company Background Lancaster, PA - Thermacore was founded in 1970 to pursue the development and commercialization of heat pipe technology. Thermacore focused its early activities on research and development in the heat pipe, thermal materials and energy conservation areas, with funding from both the government and private sector. Thermacore s early research and development effort focused on supporting initiatives of the U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Defense and NASA, and expanding the understanding, capabilities, and applications of heat pipe technology. Today, Thermacore has what is believed to be the world s largest collection of heat pipes, vapor chambers, and loop heat pipes in the broadest collection of material/working fluid combinations on continuous life and reliability testing. Thermacore s been life and reliability testing heat pipes since its founding in 1970. From 1983 to 2000, Thermacore received more than $10 million in contracts under the Small Business Innovative Research Program (SBIR).The SBIR program was established by the U.S. government to fund early-stage research and development projects at small technology companies. Thermacore used that funding to prepare and ultimately propel itself and heat pipes into an era of explosive growth as the technology was applied to a variety of products in military, space and commercial markets. During these early years, Thermacore focused its efforts on developing a fundamental component of the heat pipe the wick structure. The wick structure is an important element of the heat pipe that passively circulates the working fluid, establishes a heat pipe s heat input limitations (i.e. heat flux capability), and provides the ability of a heat pipe to operate against gravitational heads. While Thermacore continues to develop and manufacture heat pipes with a variety of wick structures (sintered powder, screen, groove, composite, etc.) today, Thermacore through the SBIR program and its early efforts were focused on developing sintered powder wick structure technology which provide heat pipes with the greatest heat flux capability, transport distance, and ability to operate against gravity. Coincidentally with the R&D work, Thermacore applied heat pipe technology to niche applications where the excellent thermal conductance characteristics of the heat pipe proved to be an enabling technology for products in the industrial and commercial thermal management market. Early product applications included heat pipes for military avionics, ground based applications (radios, transmitters, TWT s), and commercial applications such as copy machine rollers, bar code readers, as well as heat exchangers for removing heat from electronics cabinets in dirty air environments. - More -
In the early 1980s Thermacore expanded into the aerospace arena with the acquisition of Dynatherm, a small company with heat pipe efforts focused on satellite thermal control. During the Thermacore era manufacturing and test processes for aluminum axially grooved ammonia heat pipe products were enhanced and standardized into a consistent, reliable product. In the early 1990s, Thermacore licensed technology to design, develop and manufacture a new product called the Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) from what was then the Soviet Union. The Loop Heat Pipe was particularly well suited for satellite thermal control as its ability to transport heat over extremely long distances (many meters), its insensitivity to gravity, and design flexibility that allows for shock and vibration isolation satisfied the application needs of satellite thermal designers as well as permitted earth based system testing. From Niche Solution to Commercial Product In the early 1990s, Intel Corporation began to show interest in heat pipe technology for thermal management of microprocessors in mobile applications such as laptops. Intel engaged with Thermacore, the leader in heat pipe technology, to better understand heat pipe technology and to developan application guideline for cooling microprocessors. The conclusion of this work was Intel s recognition of the heat pipe as an enabling technology for higher performance microprocessors (and higher thermal dissipation) and the development of a heat pipe application guide for Intel's Pentium chip in 1994. From the Thermacore-Intel work and allied commercialization efforts underway in a range of markets, Thermacore recognized that the demand for heat pipe enabled thermal products associated with highpowered, compact computing systems was staged for rapid and explosive growth - Heat pipe technology had finally found a commercial market. To meet this growing demand and capitalize on the expected growth of laptop cooling, from 1996-1998, Thermacore concentrated on improving its manufacturing processes associated with heat pipes in order to reduce the unit cost, and manufacture in mass production volumes repeatably and reliably. Today, Thermacore uses these same manufacturing processes to manufacture heat pipes and heat pipe based assemblies for the various applications described above. The sintered wick heat pipe, has become the world standard for electronics cooling thermal management products. Heat pipes manufactured by the Thermacore manufacturing process are now produced in the millions per day and can be found in virtually every laptop, desktop and server in the world. Global Expansion In early 1998, Thermacore established Thermacore Europe with its acquisition of Isoterix Limited, a United Kingdom based thermal management solutions provider. In addition, Thermacore established Thermacore Korea and Thermacore Taiwan, each a joint venture with a local third party. In 1999, Thermacore expanded its production capabilities with a service agreement with a third party for a manufacturing facility in Mexico. - More -
Despite the rapid global expansion, it was clear that Thermacore was not going to be able to grow at the pace or add the necessary resources and skill base fast enough to meet the growing demand of their largest customers such as Compaq, Dell Computer, and Hewlett Packard. As a result, Thermacore ownership made the decision to sell the business to a larger manufacturing with a global footprint. In April 2001, Thermacore was sold to Modine Manufacturing Company (MOD), a Racine, Wisconsin based manufacturer specializing in automotive thermal management seeking to diversify into electronics cooling. The Shift to High Volume Solution Provider From 2001 through 2007, Thermacore operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary, the Electronics Cooling Division of Modine Manufacturing Company. Through the Modine era, Thermacore s business strategy shifted from the custom thermal solution, value add history, which Thermacore had historically and successfully followed, to a business strategy which focused on capitalizing on the explosive expansion of an Asian based volume product market for both heat pipes and heat pipe enabled heat sinks. At the peak of production, Thermacore was producing more than 200,000 heat pipes per day from its Taiwan facility. The rapid commoditization of the technology and the emergence of strong competitors in the volume heat sink/heat pipe market ultimately lead to Modine s decision to exit the electronics cooling market and divest Thermacore. Thermacore Returns to Independence: Re-Focusing on Its Roots While Modine s business interest in Thermacore was focused on capitalizing on the volume market opportunities in Asia, the Thermacore management team saw that the potential for the company was in reenergizing and focusing the company s strong technical capability on emerging technical challenges and again finding the applications where performance thermal solutions could be the enabling technology for the next generation of products. With that belief and commitment in the business and its capabilities, the Thermacore management team lead an effort to buy the business back from Modine. On May 1, 2008, the Thermacore management team successfully acquired Thermacore from Modine Manufacturing Company. Recently, the company announced the acquisition of k Technology, a business headquartered in Langhorne, PA, that designs and manufactures custom thermal management products for power electronics cooling. Thermal solutions from k Technology, which is now an independent division within Thermacore s corporate structure, complement Thermacore s product offering. Among its primary thermal solutions, k Technology developed the patented k-core system, which uses encapsulated graphite to help alleviate heat in power electronics. The k-core system is highly conductive thermally and offers advantages such as low mass and the ability to tailor coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) for direct bonding to electronic devices. k Technology s products are used in aerospace satellites and military aircraft such as the F-35, F-22, and F-16 fighter planes. - More
The Future - Mission and Vision Going forward, Thermacore is and will be focused on the development and application of high performance thermal solutions which will help to enable our customer s next generation of products in a range of markets including the military /aerospace, computer, communications, power semiconductor, energy conversion, medical, test equipment, and automotive. Today, Thermacore operates two facilities, the world-wide headquarters and base for North American operations located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the European headquarters, located in Ashington, Northumberland United Kingdom. Each of Thermacore s facilities is staffed with personnel to fully serve their respective local markets (sales, engineering and manufacturing). In addition, Thermacore s global engineering teams will remain focused on keeping Thermacore as the technical leader in advanced thermal management technologies, conducting Ph.D. level research and development in heat pipes, vapor chambers, loop heat pipes, pumped liquid cooling, nano-technologies and advanced materials. The distribution of our technical expertise will allow our engineering development efforts to be closely tied to our customer s and their thermal solution needs today and into the future. Thermacore s history and capability as a developer of enabling thermal technologies prepares us to take the next solution from a niche technology to the world standard, following the same route as the sintered powder wick heat pipe. About Thermacore, Inc. Founded in 1970, Thermacore specializes in the custom design, development, and manufacturing of highly engineered thermal management systems and components for a variety of OEM applications across a diversified set of global markets that includes Military/Aerospace, Computer, Communication, Energy Conversion, Medical, Transportation, Test Equipment, and Automotive. With over 39 years of experience in the design, development, and manufacturing of passive two-phase systems, Thermacore brings unparalleled engineering design expertise and thermal solution performance, quality, and reliability to these markets. Thermacore employs more than 175 employees at 4 facilities located in the United States (Lancaster and Langhorne, Pennsylvania; Ronkonkoma, NY) and the United Kingdom (Ashington, Northumberland). All US facilities are AS9100 Rev B., ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004 certified, with the Ashington facility certified to the ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004 standards. For information about Thermacore, visit www.thermacore.com. About k Technology Division Our k Technology Division designs and manufactures custom thermal management products for cooling high power density electronic packaging and other applications requiring high performance heat transfer in the Military/Aerospace, Transportation, and Industrial markets. k Technology s products include thermal cores, spreaders, straps, and protoflight components, many of which utilize its patented high thermal conductivity k-core material. k Technology is certified through Underwriters Laboratory (UL) to the ISO9001:2000 and AS9100 standards. It has two facilities in Ronkonkoma, New York (Long Island) and Langhorne, Pennsylvania. For more information about k-technology, visit www.thermacore.com.
Media Contact: Gregg J. Baldassarre Vice President, Sales and Marketing E-mail: g.j.baldassarre@thermacore.com # # #