Management
Craig Kackert, Founder and President
Craig is a multi-talented inventor/entrepreneur with an amazingly broad background.
Craig began his career as a technician for an electronic keyboard instrument manufacturer. Craig’s technical excellence and keen intellect were noticed by his managers. They gave him more engineering-oriented tasks in creating testing and inspection systems. After 4 years at that company, he joined Control Sciences Inc (CSI), a manufacturer of synchro converters. He spent 14 years at CSI emersed in the technology and business of synchro converters. While there, he also began investing in real estate.
His real estate business grew to the point where he left CSI to manage his investments fulltime. When the real estate market tanked in the early nineties, Craig needed to find a job and joined a small company that was making 6-foot-long blimps for potential military use. Craig first worked on the control electronics for the rotary servers that controlled the flight surfaces. Deficiencies in the servo design began to cause problems. Craig began investigating linear actuators to be used for the tailfin. Craig purchased a linear actuator and modified it to improve its performance.
Craig opened CK Designs to focus on the actuator business. He worked with a person who had done work for Hollywood movie studios. He thought that Craig’s advanced actuator design, that were lighter and more powerful than existing actuators, would be of interest to the Hollywood studios for use in props and animatronics. In 1994 Craig took some demonstration systems to ShowBiz Expo. Richard Landon, a mechanical engineer for Stan Winston’s special effects shop was captivated by the potential Craig’s more powerful and smaller actuators for his special effects shop.
Since then, CK Design actuators have been used in creatures for “Alien,” “Jurassic Park” T-Rexes and for special effects in many more movies. The mini actuator that was developed for Hollywood has also found a home in the military/aerospace industry where size, performance, and reliability are key. CK Designs innovative design leads the industry in all three of these key requirements.