Castheon expands to 40,000 square foot hypersonic production facility
The ADDMAN Group company has scaled operations by 4x with new machines, facilities, and an increased headcount
Castheon, Inc., an ADDMAN Group company, has reportedly experienced a surge in demand – leading to significant investment in operational and engineering infrastructure in southern California. Castheon is now moving into a new facility that boasts over 40,000 square feet of production, R&D, and engineering space.
The bigger space has an unlocked footprint for additional machines and manufacturing processes, including large format printers, heat treatments, precision machining, and inspection for aerospace and defense applications. This allows Castheon to bring more research, development, production, and inspection processes under one roof – providing highly responsive lead times to its customer base and accelerating its development of next-generation materials.
“We’ve invested over 20 million dollars in the Hypersonics sector and specifically our Castheon venture since acquisition. We’ve purchased more than 10 machines and have the toolset to be one of the largest hypersonics and critical space part providers in North America,” said Joe Calmese, CEO of ADDMAN.
Specializing in materials for extreme environments like rocket propulsion and hypersonics, Castheon has been printing refractory alloys, such as Niobium C103 and Super C103, for over eight years, and developing metallic alternatives for legacy composite hypersonic thermal protection systems. The company has continued to innovate on behalf of its space propulsion and aerospace customers – developing robust AM technology to print smaller features, with tighter tolerances, and higher performance alloys like Haynes 230, 282, 214, Inconel, GRCop-42, high-strength aluminum, and titanium alloys. The company continues to differentiate itself through alloy development and the introduction of Super C103.
“When we 3D print the refractory alloys using our unique approach to metallurgy, we are seeing the intrinsic material properties that far exceed that of wrought equivalent. The magnitude improvement in strength, oxidation resistance, and creep resistance are all derived from the additive process’ ability in controlling the microscopic level of metallic grains plus the additive processes form creating capability which makes the final product superior and affordable. That is what will change our industry. This is the next generation of hypersonic technology,” said Dr. Youping Gao, an accomplished aerospace manufacturing veteran. “ADDMAN’s investments are helping us get there faster, for our partners.”
Senior technical leaders and experts have been brought on to scale Castheon, under Dr. Gao’s tutelage. Dr. Jacob Rindler is leading Castheon’s next stage of facility and team growth as the company’s Managing Director. Industry experts Noah Hayashida, John Ploense and Cesar Gomez have also joined Castheon to accelerate its production and R&D efforts.
“Castheon is without a doubt the best place to push the boundaries of additive manufacturing technology and to solve our customers’ biggest challenges. Dr. Gao has developed a scalable approach to improving material properties and expanding the design envelope. We’ll continue to invest in our team, facility, and training to scale capacity and maintain our commitment to innovation,” said Dr. Jacob Rindler.
Castheon is forecasting continued growth and is expecting to triple its headcount by this time next year. The company is actively recruiting engineers, quality inspectors, and others.
