Medical sterilization work to drive Plasma Etch growth

British efforts to control the spread of mad cow disease are likely to bring rapid growth to a Carson City manufacturer.

Plasma Etch Inc. is gearing up for the potential of a 10-fold increase in employment bringing its workforce to 200, compared with 21 currently and is working closely with its suppliers to ensure it can ramp up quickly.

The company's products apply plasma, a highly ionized gas, to surfaces in a vacuum chamber to clean and etch surfaces.

While most of its customers historically have been manufacturers of printed circuit boards, medical devices and the like, researchers long have known that plasma etching is a highly effective way to remove organic materials from surfaces.

Researchers at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, troubled that traditional methods of sterilizing medical equipment didn't do a good job in removing prions, the biological particles suspected of carrying mad cow disease, tested the effectiveness of the Plasma Etch technology on dental instruments.

"This work suggests that plasma cleaning offers a safe and effective method for decontamination of dental instruments," the researchers wrote in the Journal of Hospital Infection. And they said the technology probably would work for general surgical instruments as well.

Late last year, the university announced that its commercial arm, Edinburgh Research and Innovation, struck a deal to license the Plasma Etch technology. The likely outcome is the installation of the Carson City company's technology in nearly every dental office in the United Kingdom.

"This is the most exciting thing we've seen," says John Wood, plasma system engineer at Plasma Etch. "It's a whole different arena."

On the other hand, the company has only about 200 days to gear up for the surge in demand, says Greg DeLarge, president and chief executive officer of the privately held company.

It's looking to hire skilled workers, including aluminum welders, machinists and electronics assemblers. It's engaged in talks with suppliers of subassemblies such as the radio-frequency generators used to power plasma-etch machines to make sure they can handle large orders. And Plasma Etch executives are thinking about how they will house the growing company, which currently works out of a 15,000-square-foot facility the company owns near the Carson City Airport.

The biggest challenge, DeLarge says, will be finding the staff the company needs from a relatively small pool of workers that combine the levels of skill and responsibility that Plasma Etch demands.

The challenge is all the greater, he says, because Nevada increasingly appears to be following the lead of neighboring California with burdensome regulation of employers.

Rapid growth is new for the company, even though it's one of the largest suppliers of plasma-etch systems in the nation.

"This always has been a boutique industry," says Wood.

Plasma Etch Inc. was launched by Richard DeLarge the father of the company's current president in Southern California in 1980.

Initially, the company provided contract plasma services to the circuit board industry, but it moved into manufacturing of its own plasma-etching hardware under the guidance of Greg DeLarge.

Today, Plasma Etch manufactures a family of products ranging in price from about $23,000 to $200,000 or more.

It made its name with customers such as NASA, Boeing, Honeywell and Lockheed-Martin with the speed of its plasma-etching process, the reliability of its systems and customer service that Wood calls "extremely responsive."

"When you call us, you get a human being on the phone," he says.

Plasma Etch devotes much of its sales effort to presentations at trade shows and development of relationships with existing customers to generate referrals.

But, as the out-of-the-blue call from the Scottish researchers demonstrates, good fortune can play a big role in marketing.

"Sometimes," Wood says, "you just stumble into things."