Date: Oct 06, 2015 Source: SBIR.gov (
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Ask any major U.S. defense prime contractor how the company got started, and chances are, "in a basement of an old monastery," won't be an answer you hear. Yet, this was precisely the case with Touchstone Research Laboratory, which flourished from such humble beginnings. With just $100 that purchased a scanning electron microscope the founders rebuilt, the company began its journey to become one of the preeminent suppliers of next-generation materials and products for a broad array of government and commercial clients.
In the beginning, the government wasn't exactly a target client. It was the Challenger Space Shuttle accident that brought a great deal of materials qualification work to Touchstone, which opened the company up to government programs. In the late 1990's, during a visit to another very successful SBIR company, Composite Optics (now Orbital/ATK), one of Touchstone's founders conceived the idea to aggressively focus on the SBIR program.
Today the company has a steady and long-standing relationship with many agencies across the Department of Defense, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. The company has utilized the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to invent dozens of new materials and products and has generated a large intellectual property portfolio.
One of these SBIR projects was the development of a fireproof carbon foam to build walls for Navy ships. This resulted in one of the company's most successful products to date - CFOAM® carbon foam, a structural material made from coal. CFOAM is lightweight, fireproof, impact absorbing, can be produced either thermally insulating or conducting, and can also be made to absorb radar.
Over the past few years the CFOAM carbon foam manufacturing processes have been refined and the manufacturing has been expanded to supply both the commercial aerospace and government aerospace markets.
CFOAM expands and contracts with changes in temperature almost identically to aerospace carbon fiber composite parts. This characteristic makes CFOAM an excellent material
to use as the basic structure of the molds for these parts. It has subsequently driven the manufacturing of composite molds to become the leading market for CFOA
Currently, Touchstone is spinning out two businesses, one to manufacture CFOAM on a very large scale and the other to manufacture the composite molds for the aerospace industry. In the composites industry, these molds are called composite tools. "As we commercialized our SBIR technologies, our original vision was to go directly into the commercial marketplace," explains Brian L. Gordon, Laboratory Director at Touchstone Research Laboratory. "But because the government is often willing to take more risks with new technologies, we found a great deal of the initial sales were to the Federal Government. The commercial markets have opened up a little slower but now dominate the sales of our SBIR related products."
Composite molds are not the only market for CFOAM. It has been used in thermal protection systems (like Space Shuttle tiles) as well as nozzles for rockets, as fireproof wall systems, as well as in energy absorbing applications. The uses for fireproof, strong foam are nearly endless. CFOAM abounds with unique properties, allowing Touchstone to continue to leverage this new material in amazing applications.
Recently, Touchstone completed a program for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to develop an electrically conductive thermal protection system that will protect rockets from lightning strikes as they pass through the atmosphere. And for the Marines, Touchstone is developing a non-metal exhaust system for a new amphibious assault vehicle. Excluding metal eliminates corrosion problems and the weight associated with metal exhaust systems.
CFOAM technology has given rise to another product, CSTONE™, for which Touchstone has also won an R&D 100 Award. CSTONE is like CFOAM without the porosity, and is strong and high temperature like CFOAM. It can be used industrially to make crucibles and kiln furniture or in the military to produce rocket nozzles and vertical take-off and landing pads.
Another of the company's innovations to win an R&D 100 award is MetPreg™, a lightweight, fiber-enhanced aluminum that is three times stronger than traditional aluminum alloys. It can also be used in temperature ranges far higher than traditional aluminum. MetPreg is a true metal matrix composite (MMC) that makes use of all traditional composite-processing techniques. MetPreg has all the advantages of metals and composites and works well with adhesives, soldering, brazing and welding.
At NASA, Touchstone is working with the agency to advance its metal matrix composite technology. Since launch vehicles are made from aluminum, Touchstone's material can be added to strategic locations to reduce the overall weight of the vehicle and improve performance. Touchstone was the 27th company in the nation, and one of only two in West Virginia, selected to take part in the Defense Production Act Title III Program. The program aims to ensure a domestic production capability that is critical for the nation's defense programs and
includes areas such as technology items, components, and industrial resources. The company has worked with its local economic development -- the Regional Economic Development Partnership -- to build a world-class research and manufacturing park that includes 4 buildings on about 10 acres. Today, Touchstone employs about 40 individuals with advanced degrees in physics, engineering, chemistry, and material science.
Touchstone will continue its efforts to leverage the SBIR program to develop innovative products and materials, spin out businesses to advance the local and national manufacturing base, and provide technical solutions to Americans and the federal government. "The SBIR program is tremendous in terms of start-up funding to explore the feasibility of your technology," says Gordon. "Once you've demonstrated that, then you're able to scale up and get additional funding from the program to get to a more mature technology level.
Without SBIR we could not have accomplished all that has been done here at Touchstone."
