Instrumentation Technologies

Rok Uršič founded Instrumentation Technologies d.o.o. in a small room at Srebrničev trg in Solkan, Slovenia.

Instrumentation Technologies hired its tenth employee.

With the signing of contracts with two launch customers, Soleil of France and Diamond of the United Kingdom, Libera began its "winning march" and essentially established a completely new product category and way of thinking and working.

The Libera family expanded to three products, each responding to the various challenges of beam stabilisation. Three elite accelerator systems laboratories (ESRF of France, CERN of Switzerland and GSI of Germany) participated in the development. The number of employees doubled to 12, while our educational structure remained at an enviable level.

Australians joined the elite company of users by equipping the Australian Light Source with Libera. First batch of instruments was delived to the USA. The first international Libera workshop was organised.

In March, the company relocated to new business premises; the building, spacious and adapted to our work methods, now provides us with excellent working conditions and adds to our ethos. The spacious hall is particularly well suited to daily meetings and occasional celebrations. Elettra of Trieste opted to change system and became the first existing accelerator to employ Libera. Our exceptional pride regarding the growth of the Libera community was expressed in autumn with the organisation of a second international Libera workshop, attended by 27 experts from around the globe. The year ended with the signing of contracts with SSRF of China and ALBA of Spain, to whom the one-thousandth Libera was sold. By the end of the year there were 20 employees engaged in the challenges of breakthrough technology, the high-technology market and international operations.

The year began with the celebration of the sale of the one-thousandth Libera. We were honoured by a visit from the Minister of the Economy, Andrej Vizjak. Director Rok Uršič used the occasion to reveal the company‘s future plans, including expansion to new markets with our proven business philosophy, the establishment of Solkan and the wider region as the centre of the industry segment known as "instrumentation", and the active contribution to the development of Solkan and the region as an above-average, attractive community for people of all ages from both Slovenia and abroad. Instrumentation Technologies received the prestigious Slovenian award - the Silver Gazelle 2007!

36 employees (half with MSc and PhD educ.). 1400 Liberas sold. Prime Minister Janez Janša visited our company during the Government visit to Goriška region. Mr. Janša congratulated us on our work and pointed out that we contribute to Slovenia’s high profile in the world. We also discussed the FAIR Project – the construction of a next generation international accelerator center for research with ions and antiprotons – in which Slovenia and Instrumentation Technologies participate as one of the partners. We were constantly adding new employees, and the Libera community was growing rapidly; the circle of external co-workers in Slovenia and abroad continued to expand; and our company was gaining a higher profile among the wider public and the media – all of this while we maintained our genuineness and the smiles on our faces! Instumentation Technologies wins "Zlata Gazela" for the best quick growing company".

In 2009 we decided to enlarge the Libera product family and opted for a strategy of consolidation of the accelerators market. The Libera family grew to nine members in 2009. With the new products we cover a broader spectrum of needs with particle accelerators of different types. New generations of products are developed on a modular platform that enables faster development of new products and builds on advanced technologies. Together with some great partners we won the tender to establish the Centre of Excellence for Biosensors, Instrumentation and Process Control.

The year is marked by the further enlargement of the Libera family of products, which gains four new members. Targets support the strategy that we defined in 2009.

With the expansion to spectroscopy market Instrumentation Technologies opens a new chapter building on our core competence in designing, building, selling and supporting easy to use high performance instrumentation systems.

Production of certain Libera instruments based on platform A was ceased. One new member, Libera Single Pass E, joined the Libera family, upgrading and substituting for the Libera Brilliance Single Pass. Next, the EvRx (Event Receiver Module, MTCA.4 compliant) was presented at IPAC 2012. We also became partners of the oPAC (Optimization of Particle Accelerators) network within the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) scheme.

Our R&D team started with the design of a new compact instrument, Libera Spark, which is dedicated to monitoring beam position in injectors and boosters. We also embarked on a project to develop a powerful credit card sized product with the potential to replace many expensive laboratory instruments at a price that every student or electronics enthusiast could afford. The project team launched a successful Kickstarter campaign which ended with cumulative pledges amounting to 500% of its funding target.

The first batch of Libera Spark units have been delivered to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. An important milestone was reached with the redesign of the new generation clock-transfer system – the Libera Sync 3 – to meet the strict accelerator requirements for the present and future fourth-generation light sources. Red Pitaya became Instrumentation Technologies spin-off company and is run as a fast growing start-up. The team is now located at the Faculty for Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana.

Instrumentation Technologies recognized the opportunity to expand its vast knowledge gained in the particle accelerator market into smart connectivity (smart grid, smart metering and smart cities) as well as the medical technology and healthcare markets, through the creation of the Instrumentation Technologies Solutions (ITS) business unit. Its access to cutting edge technology coupled with an agile business and project management approach has attracted several clients, including a metering company based in the Northwestern US which has partnered with ITS on several projects. The results were presented at the Consumer Electronic Shows (CES), Internet of Things World and Distribu TECH events in the subsequent years. A company based in Southwestern Germany has partnered with ITS on the majority of its projects related to the conformance of its HW platforms with EMC requirements.

Important step for our Libera team, as we introduce our instruments in the field of medical accelerators.

Instrumentation Technologies bought all the outstanding shares of Red Pitaya, a company that is pioneering the move to low cost, open-source, reconfigurable instrumentation with its credit-card-sized STEMlab™ platform. Red Pitaya was spun off from Instrumentation Technologies in 2014. The acquisition will provide development synergies and resources that will enable Red Pitaya to further increase the performance of STEMlab with higher speeds and improved measurement resolution. Red Pitaya will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Instrumentation Technologies and will retain a separate identity as it serves very different market sectors.

Instrumentation Technologies successfully developed a device that is a part of S.A.M - responsible for monitoring the atmosphere for astronauts in the International Space Station.

In the midst of pandemic and against all odd's, our team successfully delivered the biggest order all across the ocean. A system of 560 BPM pickups were delivered to Argonne National Laboratory as a part of their upgrade project.

ARX Equity Partners, a private equity firm acquired Instrumentation Technologies.

With 25 years of experience in the field of particle accelerators, Instrumentation Technologies prepares to position itself as new important player in the market of nuclear reactors.