General Description : Founded and Grew from the Automotive Industry in USA

Uticor, IL - Established 1968 http://www.uticor.net/ Uticor, formerly Struthers Dunn Systems division, has been in the forefront of PLC, welding controls, message displays and operator interface technology since 1968. Uticor, in fact, was one of the early inventors of PLCs back in 1968. It held numerous patents on PLCs, then called Process Control Computers. In the 1970's, Uticor applied it's PLC technology to welding controls and became one of the top suppliers of this technology to the Automotive industry. In fact, Uticor provided university research grants in collaboration with Ford in this area. In the 1980's, Uticor became known as the premier supplier of Message Displays and Marquees in North America. It's large LED marquees became an Automotive standard. Uticor always had a very conservative design philosophy and it showed in its products and thus earned worldwide recognition as “Built Like a Tank” or “Uticor Tough”. AVG's Autotech division was the inventor of the first microprocessor based Programmable Limit Switch. In fact Autotech was the first company to coin the phrase “PLS” for replacing electro-mechanical cam-banks. Autotech has always lived by its tradition of being the most innovative company in the field of Automation controls. We come from a background where our Automotive customers, such as Pontiac Motors, back in 1976, required us to run encoder wiring right along side with 440 VAC motor wiring without a shield as they did not want to change the connector between the control cabinet and the machine. You see, we had just invented the PLS and were replacing the old rotary cam switch with a PLS. GM wanted the benefits of the advanced technology but not change their wiring. Our Autotech division designed a Resolver based PLS where you could run it right along with 440 VAC and withstand unimaginable inductive kicks. In fact, we ended up making the resolver wiring short circuit proof and capable of taking a direct 120 VAC hit.