Materion Brush Beryllium & Composites reports that it has formed a “strategic manufacturing and marketing partnership” with Aristo Cast Inc., an investment caster in Almont, MI, concerning Materion’s line of aluminum-beryllium investment castings. The two companies initiated the partnership last October, Materion stated. Other terms of the agreement were not indicated.
It was last October that Materion announced it had completed installing its own investment casting capability at its manufacturing plant in Elmore, OH. More recently, it reported its effort to qualify its investment cast products with Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lighting II stealth fighter jet program.
Aristo Cast produces investment castings in numerous nonferrous and ferrous alloys, including aluminum, carbon and stainless steels, and difficult-to-cast materials like magnesium.
“When Materion approached us about partnering with them, we immediately embraced this win-win opportunity,” according to Jack Ziemba, president and owner of Aristo Cast. He called the aluminum-beryllium material a “great fit” with his company’s investment casting technology.
Materion detailed that Aristo Cast’s shell technology — the ceramic structures into which the aluminum-beryllium alloys are cast — has been helpful in its qualification efforts, improving the casting quality and reducing production costs for its aluminum-beryllium investment castings.
“Aristo Cast technology represents a game-changing development for the production of AlBeCast,” said Lawrence Ryczek, v.p. and general manager of Materion Brush Beryllium & Composites.
AlBeCast is the company’s proprietary series of investment castings.
Materion’s partnership with Aristo Cast bears similarities to IBC Advanced Alloys Inc.’s partnership with Nu-Cast Inc., another aluminum investment caster, to produce beryllium-aluminum investment castings for aerospace buyers. Like Materion, IBC also recently sought to qualify its products for the Lightning II’s Electro-Optical Targeting System.
“We are in qualification with a number of aerospace, defense, and semiconductor firms seeking to capitalize on this alloy system and casting technology breakthrough,” Ryczek added, referring to the company’s efforts at qualification with Lockheed.