08/31/2012
The Fresno Bee, Jan 31, 1988.
A good disaster - say, an earthquake or a drought - would help business for Central California Video.
But the 15-year-old Fresno-based company is doing well even in placid times.
CCV, which manufactures video cameras that can operate at extreme depths within the earth or sea, is preparing to move next month into a 16,400-square-foot building in the Shields-Argyle Business Park in Clovis.
Since 1979, it has been expanding in a series of 1,600-square-foot modules that make up a 12,000-square-foot industrial complex near the Fresno Air Terminal. However, it has outgrown that.
The new facility, located by real estate broker Darryl F. Gillis, is in a business park developed by Spencer Enterprises. John McCann was the project manager.
Richard Vaughn, president and owner of CCV, said his company’s product is useful in probing debris and checking the condition of buried water and sewer lines after earthquakes. And because the cameras are widely used in water-well drilling, 1976 – the year of the severe California drought – was “just about our best year,” he said.
The oil shortage of a few years ago seemed to offer new opportunities for CCV, which built a special camera for the University of Wyoming, through the federal Department of Energy, for use in shale fields. But with the end of the energy crisis, Congress cut its support for the program in 1984, ending CCV’s expectations of additional orders.
But that’s about the only bad news. CCV’s story is mostly news about solid performance in electronic research and development, with a worldwide list of clients.
Vaughn, who has been in the technical and engineering end of video electronics for over 25 years, started in business for himself about 1970.
I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do at that time,” he said. “I started selling electronic parts, and after a couple of years I realized that was neither profitable nor something to get excited about. My true love was still electronic design work.”
Through an inventor friend in the water-well industry, he learned of the need for a television camera that would work under water.
Still-film camera were being used extensively in well drilling, he said, but, “with a live camera down the hole you can see where you’re going, so you won’t stub your nose, perhaps.”
Developing a video camera for the job was a formidable task in those days, Vaughn said, because the cables required very heavy and cumbersome – “like electronic logging cable.”
There was no difficulty transmitting telegraph or even telephone signals with a copper conductor inside an armored steel wire, he said, but, nobody had tried to transmit pictures.”
Applying modern space technology, Vaughn’s company found a solution and CCV now can produce continuous cables that can go far beneath the surface.
Camera housings and lenses must be strong enough to withstand water pressure of a half-pound per square inch. CCV has tested its products to a level of about 4,000 pounds per square inch, allowing them to extend to depths of 8,000 feet.
“It’s now a pretty routine thing to do,” Vaughn said.
Most of CCV’s camera and related equipment are built to order, for use in water and mineral exploration on land, in undersea oil wells and in refining and manufacturing chimneys and retorts.
One of the company’s models is used on a robot hovering over an offshore oil wellhead, and others are used to survey platform mechanisms. CCV has submitted a bid for a camera to be used for submarine perimeter surveillance.
The most widespread use of the cameras is in sewer-line inspections, Vaughn said.
CCV never patented its system, because in the early 1970’s when it first considered doing so there were indications that other inventors might dispute the attempt.
Now, Vaughn said, he is glad it never happened because the company did not have to reveal its design secrets and, although other have built facsimiles, “they’ve failed to understand the theory behind it.”
CCV manufactures equipment not only under its own trademarks – Wellcam and BoreTech – but builds camera for some competitors.
Cameras built to order range from $5,000 to $35,000, with a profit margin for the company of 40-50 percent.
Vaughn declined to give company sales volume or profit figures.
CCV, which has 22 employees, is essentially a family-run operation. Vaughn and his wife, Charlene, own all the stock – although a plan to go public has been on hold since last October’s market crash.
Son Douglas Vaughn heads the manufacturing division and son David, the engineering section.
Clyde Salisbury, with the title of administrative assistant is Richard’s right-hand man.
