Assembly in Action: Test Tool Verifies Explosion Suppressors
An explosion results when heat and pressure build rapidly in response to some trigger event. A Fike system recognizes such an event and stops it in its tracks. When a detector in the system senses that a dangerous reaction has begun, it sends a signal to the system control panel, which initiates release of an extinguishing agent or triggers other protective action. The typical Fike system carries out this chain of events within 50 milliseconds. This explains why milliseconds can be an eternity to Fike’s Rick Reade.
Based in Kansas City, Reade provides training to those who will operate and maintain these suppression systems once they’re on the job, whether they end up at a bowling ball factory, a cookie factory or monitoring fuel at a Titan 5 launch pad. In 1999, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency asked Fike to determine the flammability of seized drugs it would be destroying in a new facility it was creating for that purpose.