Hear No RF Evil – See No RF Evil

Lawrence Behr

Lawrence Behr, founder of LBA Group, was interviewed in the November / December 2009 issue of NC Magazine.  LBA Group earned position number 2,780 on the 2009 Inc. 5000, Inc’s annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

In the interview, Behr said, “We were founded in 1963, and we have been quite adaptable over that period of time.  As a small business, we have to drive toward the opportunities.  We live in niches, and ours is a flexible one.”

He noted that his company has shifted from specialties in radio and TV to cellular technologies and even to mapping projects, following the opportunities that emerged as technologies changed.  Today, the company has shifted to more of a service and marketing company than a manufacturing company.

“The industry is a mixed bag,” he said.  “There’s capital investment, but the negative side is that the economy has been such that competitors are making deals that offer low or no profit margins, and we’ve had to lower our prices to compete.”

At the production test facilities of a major circuit fabricator, it was dance time – all the time!

This company fabricated garage door openers by the thousands, and put them through their paces on a neat row of test positions. The problem was, one tester would open his “door”, and his neighbor’s “door” would go down! A fun time, but terrible for production rates.

The problem was that the production test fixtures were hot with RF from the door opener transmitters on a common frequency, so were interacting with each other.

The frustrated quality control chief presented the problem to LBA Technology EMC engineers who were able to design a custom EMFaraCage™ that fit the existing test fixtures. Using an internal antenna probe, testing showed complete isolation of the test positions.

After LBA provided custom EMFaraCages™ for all the test fixtures, the dance of the garage door openers came to a stop!

EMFaraCages™ have solved problems of RF interference in some of the most unlikely places from lab animal cages to nuclear enrichment facilities to cell phone testers. LBA is anxious to tackle your RF shielding or isolation problem.

In a breakthrough action, the Federal Communications Commission today authorized digital television stations to use DTS technology. Read more here.