In 1978, PAC was founded by Bell Labs scientist, Dr. Sotirios J. Vahaviolos
and venture capitalists, Frederick Adler (VENAD) and Milton Pappas (Euclid
Partners) in the University town of Princeton, New Jersey. Since its founding,
PAC has grown both internally and by the acquisitions of Trodyne Corporation
(founded in 1969) in 1980, and Dunegan Corporation (founded in 1968 -
the oldest AE equipment manufacturer in the world) in 1985, to become
the acknowledged world leader in this field.
In December 1994, Dr. Vahaviolos led a management buy-out, through the
MISTRAS Group Inc., to acquire
all shares of the PAC Group. Today, PAC, owned by its employees, commands
better than 85%� market share of the AE sensors and equipment sales. The
new Holding Company is emerging as an organization of multiple technology
centers in the USA, Europe, Asia and South America.
The Company has more than thirty-five years of continuing AE experience
in sensor research, (from wideband to high fidelity, low cost resonant
and band limited), and acoustic emission test data experience in applications
such as pressure vessel testing, pipeline monitoring, railroad tank cars,
high pressure tubes and tube trailers, concrete, aging aircraft, tank
bottoms, weld monitoring, electronic components including Hard Disks,
bearing and valve monitoring, composite materials testing, defect detection
and localization, biomedical applications, as well as other processes
where a material is undergoing a state of change or experiencing a crack
initiation and propagation. To help technology transfer, PAC has created its REACT (Research, Engineering,
Applications, Certification and Training) organization which performs
basic contract research, applications and most importantly, provides educational
Training and Certification in accordance with ASNT's SNT-TC-1A Level I
and II programs and other international standards. REACT also coordinates
all PAC research activities worldwide and works with Universities and
research institutes on several SBIR contracts. |
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While the strength of the
Company is in AE, several of our employees are also experts in other NDT
fields. We have expanded our innovative AE instrumentation technology to
other more traditional fields of NDT such as Ultrasonics, Eddy Current and
Resistivity Alloy Sorting. In early 1990, we formed our traditional
NDT Division that introduced UltraPAC-II, a sophisticated UT Digital DSP-based
product and fastEddy, a second generation dual frequency Digital Eddy Current
instrument.
To foster further expansion in other fields of nondestructive testing,
the MISTRAS Group Inc. acquired Scanning Systems International (SSI) in
1999, and combined it with PAC's UT division to form NDT
Automation, a semi-independent business unit of the Group. In
late 2000, MISTRAS Group Inc. acquired Quality
Services Laboratories, Inc. (QSL-Plus) to extend its activities to
both advanced and traditional NDT inspection services.In 2001,MISTRAS
Group Inc. increased its portfolio of sensor technologies with the acquisition
of Vibra-Metrics,
one of the oldest companies to offer vibration sensors, instruments and
on-line plant asset management systems (SENSOR HIGHWAY)
for internet/intranet based predictive maintenance. Over the years, we have been blessed with so many excellent employees who have transposed standard jobs into careers dedicated to AE and NDT
in general. PAC could never be where it is today without this great
asset, along with the loyalty of so many customers worldwide who
trust our employees and products. We, the management of PAC, thank them
both! |
