In 1999, Environmental Tectonics Corporation (Amex: ETC) (ETC), an internationally positioned developer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art flight simulators, aircrew trainers, centrifuges, aero-medical equipment, and motion-based, virtual reality type entertainment systems announced formation of ETC High Performance Composites. The key resources of the former ARDCO Composites (Advance Ratio Design Company, Inc.) of Chester, PA have joined ETC and will form the technical and management core of the new group. Over its nearly forty-year history, ARDCO earned a well-deserved reputation as a pioneering contributor to the advanced materials technologies. Among many other significant "firsts", they developed and manufactured the first all-composite propeller blade certified by the FAA for use on a commercial airliner (the CASA C-212). Over the past ten years the ETC High Performance Composites team has developed inventions and processes which make possible the molding of massive, high- strength composite material structures previously considered to be impractical or impossible, such as the primary landing gear beams for heavy-lift helicopters. Advance Ratio Design Co., Inc., (ARDCO Composites), designs, develops, and manufactures composite components and structures for aerospace and industrial applications, mainly on a contract basis. Examples of their products include the all-composite airframe for a Bell/Boeing tiltrotor RPV, turboprop blades, major landing-gear components for helicopters, and deck houses and superstructures for hovercraft. They make helicopter rotor blades by matched die compression molding graphite/glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy prepreg with foam and honeycomb cores. A variety of thermoplastics and thermosets reinforced with carbon, aramid, and glass fiber are used. Special capabilities include resin transfer molding of large, high load-bearing parts.
