X-RAY—X-Men

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C & A; X-Ray Inc.


Year Founded:

1983


Core Business:

Servicing hospital X-ray processing machines


Revenue in 1996:

$3.1 million


Revenue in 2000:

$6.8 million


Revenue in 2001:

$7.5 million (projected)


Employees in 1996:

32


Employees in 2000:

35


Employees in 2001:

36


Goal:

To convince hospitals to install its water-saving add-on device to X-rays processors


Driving Force:

Need for hospitals to process hundreds of X-rays each day and to reduce water bills


Developing a system to recycle water used in x-ray machines has made two entrepreneurs heroes to area hospitals, which Now save millions of gallons

Talk about creating opportunity out of crisis. For David Crowe and Ken Wrye, co-owners of C & A; X-Ray Inc., a silver recovery and X-ray processing service firm in Paramount, the 1994 Northridge earthquake opened up a new line of business.

Crowe, 58, and Wrye, 54, had spent the previous decade building up their company into one of the larger local servicers of X-ray processing machines in local hospitals and medical clinics. The work, though hardly glamorous, keeps vital X-ray processing machines up and running.

The quake had shut off water supplies to many local hospitals that were long-time clients of C & A;, forcing the hospitals to rely on bottled water. That wreaked havoc with X-ray processing machines, which, like old-fashioned photo processors, use thousands of gallons of tap water each day as part of the X-ray development process.

With water at a premium, Crowe and Wrye were forced to improvise to keep the processing machines up and running. They brought in small tanks that had contained developer and fixer liquids and, through a hodgepodge of pumps and tubing, converted them into miniature water-recycling machines that attached to the processors.

These ad-hoc water recycling devices used a mere 15 to 20 gallons of water a day, allowing hospitals to keep more of their precious and costly bottled water for other medical purposes.

“It really was a way of jury-rigging these machines to keep them operating on an absolute minimum of bottled water,” said co-owner Crowe. “It was either that or shut the machines down and not have the capability of developing X-rays.”

The biggest fear had been that the quality of the X-rays would suffer; X-rays need lots of fresh water to cool and rinse the film during the development process, which is why tap water is kept on all the time. But the X-rays came out just fine with the recycled water.

It wasn’t until months later, after the hubbub from the quake subsided, that Crowe and Wrye realized they had stumbled onto something. Besides serving as backup equipment during an emergency, the recycling device could cut water used by processors by 96 percent, saving over a million gallons of water a year just for a single hospital X-ray processing machine.

So, the two began perfecting their recycling device in the back room of their Paramount service yard, all the while continuing to service and repair X-ray processing machines in hospitals and medical clinics. Two years ago, C & A; X-Ray received a patent on the new device, allowing the company to begin marketing it on a test basis in several local hospitals.

“These water-saving ad-ons work just fine,” said Cindy Allen, director of imaging services at Good Samaritan Hospital near downtown L.A. Good Samaritan has five X-ray processors, all made by film processing giant Agfa-Gevaert Group. “They have saved us an awful lot of water.”


Million gallons saved

At the same time, recognizing the need for new water-saving technologies in water-conscious Southern California, Crowe and Wrye contacted the L.A. Department of Water & Power and the Metropolitan Water District. At the DWP, officials began testing the new technology to see if it would qualify for the agency’s water conservation rebate program.

“We’ve been double-checking the numbers they’ve been getting and yes, our meters show that one of their devices can save over one million gallons in a year for a large X-ray processor, which is a huge savings,” said Mark Gentili, water conservation specialist for the DWP. “You don’t realize how much water is saved until you stop to think that most of the big X-ray processors in hospitals keep water flowing from the tap 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

If the DWP certifies the technology, hospitals and other users could be eligible for payments of up to $1,250 for every million gallons saved, in addition to the lower bills.

The MWD, meantime, has awarded C & A; X-Ray a $28,000 grant to continue refinements of the technology.

Gentili noted that processor manufacturers like Eastman Kodak Co. and Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. Inc. have put flow restrictors and shut-off valves on their machines and may not need the C & A; X-Ray device.

But Wrye said these valves often break or simply aren’t used at all. “It just was never a high priority for hospitals to use,” he said.

There may be an even larger obstacle on the horizon for C & A; X-Ray’s new water-saving technology: the advent of digital imaging technology, which threatens to do away with conventional water-guzzling processors.

“We’ve looked at it, but it’s so expensive and such a major investment that until the prices come down, it’s not really an option for us,” said Allen. “It’s still at least a couple years away.”

Nonetheless, Crowe and Wrye know that digital processing is not far off. “Those (digital) machines will need servicing, too, and we are lining ourselves up with the major manufacturers so we’ll keep our service contracts,” Crowe said.

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