Any serious business where employees wear bunny suits demands attention.

But these “bunny suits” aren’t Halloween costumes. They’re bulky, full-body coverings that are scientifically designed to keep lint, hair, skin cells and dust from escaping into the atmosphere.

Edmonton-based Micralyne needs large numbers of these high-tech suits because it makes micro-devices, a process so sensitive that a fleck of dust can be ruinous. Micralyne’s smallest products measure less than a millimetre square, with components that can be smaller than a 1,000th of a millimetre. Their largest products are no more than a few centimetres square.

The suits and associated clean rooms are important to help cut the density of particulate matter floating in the air. A normal, clean office has roughly 700,000 particles per cubic foot of air. Micralyne needs it to be less than 10 particles per cubic foot.

File photos by Jack Dagley, Business Edge
Micralyne Inc. president and CEO Chris Lumb outside a MEMS fabrication ‘clean’ room.

Such super-clean facilities are commonly associated with science departments at universities or the manufacturing and research facilities of companies such as Intel. It’s startling that there’s a “small” profitable business in Alberta impressing the world with its high micro-manufacturing standards and R&D. (Almost none of Micralyne’s customers are in Alberta; most are in the United States.)

To understand this company in the simplest terms, it creates tiny customized devices, including computer chips, sensors, telecommunications switches and super-small fluid-testing systems. Among its products are tiny coolant devices, called heat spreaders, for the radar instruments of U.S. F18 fighter jets, and emission sensors for Ford’s vehicle exhaust systems.

Micralyne is a first-tier manufacturer, meaning that it fills orders from manufacturers that, in turn, put the tiny Micralyne devices into their end-user products, or put them into products that will be put into end-user products.

“We speak a lot at conferences. We attend a lot of trade shows. And we do a certain amount of direct marketing. Mostly we look to have our reputation precede us,” says president and CEO Chris Lumb, describing how he markets his specialized company to the world from remote Alberta.

Chris Lumb with one of the company’s microchip plates.

Recent reports have suggested revenue in the $10-million range, with a positive balance sheet. Last week, Lumb was meeting with clients from all over the world, living proof that both size – and what you do with it – matters.

THE SKINNY:
* Company Name: Micralyne Inc.
* Website: www.micralyne.com
* Employees: 88 (25 engineers, and 45 operators who wear the bunny suits)
* Description: A manufacturer of microfabricated and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS)-based products for instrumentation companies worldwide.