My email to Bill with responses:
Hi Bill,
I am an investor potentially seeking to take a stake in The company. Couple quick questions.
1. What is the technology behind these self lubricating bearings? 2. What's the warranty.
3. What is the current manufacturing capacity?: units per day/week/month. 4. Do you have any current POs? 5. If you had to say one thing was missing in order to start mass sales what would it be?
I appreciate your responses and understand that you can only say what you can say.
Look forward to helping you grow.
Thank you,
Response:
Hi xxxx,
The bearing is comprised of a single ball with a hole bored through it and a single race or outer ring. The race is fixed in a position and the ball can both rotate and misalign. It's kind of like an elbow or shoulder joint. The ball doesn't rotate 360 degrees but articulates. So the bearings are used in areas where there is rotation and misalignment. One example of use is in the joints of a landing gear where two joints come together. They are joined by a bearing. The self lubricating aspect means that there is a fabric liner in place on the inside diameter of the race. The liner has Teflon on it and the Teflon provides lubrication between the ball and race so no grease is required, making the bearings maintenance free.
There is no warranty per se. Every application is different. There are performance requirements for qualification and different sizes of bearings last for varying numbers of cycles at various loads. So some bearings are changed out often and others may never be changed out.
We presently have the capacity to do approximately $20 million annually. Increasing capacity is not difficult. To increase capacity by $10 million we would need an additional $50,000 in machinery and equipment.
We do have existing purchase orders.
The one thing missing is working capital to take on significant orders. We don't want to take on a large order and not have the capital to make parts. Being late in deliveries would be disastrous. We are working on that issue by talking to potential investment partners and feel that we are moving toward selecting our partner or partners.
Regards,
Bill McKay
