Kentech Instruments Limited

Kentech Instruments Ltd. was established in 1983 by a small group of university scientists. It specialises in the manufacture of high voltage fast pulse generator systems and x-ray streak cameras and gated detectors. We are a small company with a staff of about 8 people but we have an unusual range of skills and a large network of specialist contacts.

The company came into existence when the availability of large laser systems lead to Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments in the late '70s for which it became necessary to develop a reliable compact x-ray streak camera. The particular design requirements of this camera, namely restricted access to the experiment and the need to position the electronics away from the detector, lead us into the high voltage switching electronics which is central to all our products.
The electronics had to be capable of driving the sweep plates of the streak tube remotely. It was this requirement that led to the development of fast high power avalanche transistor circuits capable of driving loads via cables.
From 1983 after the formation of Kentech Instruments Ltd. the company has been selling this type of x-ray streak camera and the novel pulse generator designs have been developed into products in their own right.

In the time since the first of these high speed avalanche pulser was built, producing 1kV in a nanosecond, we have increased the peak power by a factor of 1000 and reduced the rise time by a factor of 10.

Kentech Moved to its current premises in January 2007. Some pictures of our old Lab are available, click here.

Kentech Instruments Ltd. was founded with the cooperation of Imperial College of Science and Technology, London and the Plasma Physics Group in its Physics Department. Although Kentech has no formal connection with the college we would like to express our thanks for encouragement during our formation.