Behlke Power Electronics GmbH, Kronberg im Taunus, Germany
President and senior engineer of Behlke Power Electronics Germany is Frank Behlke.
Frank is doing professional electronic design since more than 35 years and since 25
years he is specialized in pulsed power electronics and high-voltage semiconductor
stacks. He is your first contact person in challenging projects. Frank is an expert
for analog electronics, pulsed power, EMC and practical electronic design. In the
early eighties he worked as freelance engineer for several high-tech companies. He
developed many measuring instruments for electrical and non-electrical measurands, control systems and switch mode power supplies for very different applications.
But his maybe most interesting job was at the Universities of Frankfurt and Muenster
from 1980 to 1987, when he worked as a privately employed electronic engineer for
Prof. Dr. Ing. Franz Hillenkamp and Prof. Michael Karas, who have been nominated for
the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for the invention of the MALDI mass spectrometer,
which became a worldwide instrument standard in chemical analysis. Frank developed
and realized the electronics in the early stage of this research project. He liked
the job very much, but it became particularily exciting in summer 1985, when the scientists asked Frank to built a high-voltage pulser for some experiments with the
ion lense of their LAMMA 1000 time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS). In the same time the very first Power MOSFET came on the market and Frank knew immediately,
that this brandnew material could be the perfect base for another revolutionary new
product. Throughout the summer 1985 he experimented day and night with this new
material and then he presented the first Fast High Voltage Push-Pull Switch in the
institute, which enabled the researchers to conduct special experiments with the ion
desorption process in the TOF-MS. The experiments were sensationally successful and
they realised, that the instruments mass resolution can be improved dramatically by
pulsing the acceleration voltage with a certain delay, a methode which experts call
today "delayed extraction". This discovery was the initial trigger for Franks firm.
very soon into a capital society with the former name "Behlke Electronic GmbH". The company leased an inexpensive office
building in the West of Frankfurt and began rapidly to expand. The scientists worldwide were very interested in the amazing
characterictics of the Behlke HV switches and in the beginning, 95% of Behlkes customers were researchers and scientists. But
Frank did not rest on his laurels. Over the years, Frank and his engineering team worked very hard on the constant improvement
of the solid-state switches. The high voltage switch, which has been originally designed for scientific purposes only, became
a very professional and highly reliable industrial product. Many manufacturers of the laser- and medical industry asked for a
reliable and cost efficient replacement for old thyratrons, cold cathode tubes and spark-gaps and the Behlke switch perfectly
fulfilled all the requirements. The switches proved their long-term reliability even in the harshest industrial enviroments.
Behlke HV switches became an industry standard in hundreds of professional applications. Today Behlke products are often
used in safety-relevant medical equipment, as well as in military radar stations, which illustrates the high level of product quality, for which the Behlke team worked so hard over the past 25 years.
At the end of the nineties the facility in Frankfurt became too small for the production. In 1999 Behlke moved to Kronberg,
a small city about 15 miles North-West of Frankfurt, where two large industrial buildings were available by chance. Here was
enough space to install all the large machinery neccessary for an efficient electronic manufacturing process. In the following
years Behlke re-invested the profits in the development of new products and in modern manufacturing and laboratory equipment.
In order to achieve a maximum part component density per built volume of the high-voltage switching modules, Behlke decided in
2007 to install an own surface mount (SMT) production line. Nevertheless, in the meantime the production capacity in Kronberg
is almost exhausted again and therefore Behlke has started to built up additional capacities in the USA.
Behlke Germany is worldwide active and delivers to almost every country. The export share is about 85% of the total business. Several local sales representatives substitute Behlke especially in the Asian market.
Head and senior engineer of Behlke Power Electronics USA is Monty Grimes. Monty
joined Behlke after he was a Behlke customer for more than 10 years. At Behlke USA he
is now responsible for the establishment and expansion of the production capacities
in Billerica and for the technical consultation of North American customers. Monty
has a BSEE from the University of South Alabama and a MSEE from the Texas Tech Uni-
versity Lubbock. He is specialized in high power microwave transmitters for military
radar systems and high voltage modulators and high power transmitter equipment for
the plasma and fusion research.
Monty started his career as design engineer for klystron-based microwave transmitters. After that he designed power supplies for arcjet electric rocket engines before be-
coming a senior research engineer and project manager for a US Air Force program to redesign the 2.5 Megawatt transmitter klystron modulators at the BMEWS II radar site
in Clear, Alaska. Afterwards he joined a couple of private companies in the field of
high power radar and high voltage technology. In 1999 he started to work for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Plasma Science and Fusion Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts as RF design engineer for 3 Megawatt transmitters using twelve 250kW C-
band klystrons. 5 years later, he moved to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington,
where he was lead engineer for a dual-band, high power transmitter radar program. On
behalf of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory he worked from 2008 to 2011 on the Ronald Reagan
Missile Test Site on the Kwajalein Island in the Pacific Ocean, to modernize the
120 kV radar modulators by means of Behlke solid-state switches.
Monty has more than 32 years experience in practical high frequency and pulsed power
electronics. His outstanding expertise in this field combined with the deep knowledge
about Behlke solid-state switches make him a prime consultant for Behlke products.
