Clarkston, Wash.-based defense contractor Isothermal Systems Research Inc. has leased a building in Liberty Lake and plans to begin moving its corporate headquarters there next month. The company expects to employ 120 to 150 people in the facility within the next 18 months.


The 47,000-square-foot building, at 2218 N. Molter, initially will house the engineering and program-management operations of Isothermal Systems Research (ISR), which makes cooling systems for electronic components, says Don Tilton, the companys vice-chairman and co-founder.


About 20 to 35 people who currently work in those operations in Clarkston will move into the Liberty Lake facility in August, he says. After that, People will be moving up in blocks over the next year and a half. Eighteen months from now we expect (the building) to be pretty well fully occupied, he says.


ISRs research and development, prototyping, and short-run manufacturing operations will stay in Clarkston, where the company leases a 35,000-square-foot facility, Tilton says.


Eventually, ISR plans to open a manufacturing plant in the Spokane area, but that wont be in the planning stages until the early part of 2004, he says.


Tilton says the company found it necessary to expand to Liberty Lake because, Weve just been unable to grow fast enough down here from a staffing perspective. Were considerably behind our hiring curve, and in order to staff our programs, weve been forced to hire a lot of people that live in Spokane and have been commuting down here.


ISR currently employs 95, he says. It expects to hire another 30 to 40 people by the end of this year, and 100 more in 2003.


One of those hired will be a CEO for the company, he adds. ISR, which was founded in 1988 by Tilton and his brother, Charles, in the recent past has received management assistance from Spokane-based Raven Ventures LLC. To continue its growth, however, ISR needs a CEO, and its now searching for one, Don Tilton says.


Millions in military contracts


Currently, about 98 percent of ISRs work is defense related, Tilton says. For example, the company recently received two contracts totaling $12.5 million from an agency called Defense Microelectronics Activity. In 2000, it landed a $35 million, five-year contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center to develop airborne spray-cooling systems.


Such contractswhich Tilton credits U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt with helping the company to obtainenable ISR to continue to refine its technology, reduce its cost, and standardize components that can be used in marketable products, he says.


ISRs patented spray-cool technology is designed for electronics that have extreme cooling requirements, Tilton says. The process involves cooling electronic components by sealing them in an enclosure and spraying them with a fluid that vaporizes; the vapor then travels through a heat exchanger where its condensed, dissipating the heat, and is collected to be re-sprayed onto the electronic components.


The Defense Standardization Program recently said that ISRs technology shows strong promise of overcoming many of the shortfalls of unmodified COTS (commercial off-the-shelf products) when used in a harsh military environment. A report on spray-cooling technology commissioned by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in 2000 found that ISR was the market leader and may be the only near-term supplier of this technology.


Despite its success with the military, Tilton says ISRs plan is to increase its commercial business over the next five years so that defense contracts represent just 40 percent of its overall sales.


In that effort, ISR initially will target extreme high-end applications for its technology, such as special-purpose supercomputers, he says. Eventually, high-performance computer servers and workstations could be cooled using ISRs spray-cool technology, he says.


Tilton says ISR should post about $14 million in revenue this year, although it could be a little less than that because of the difficulties the company is having ramping up its employment.


Even if it doesnt hit its target, the business isnt going away, he says. Its just going to get pushed out to 2003.