News

Governor Jay Inslee breaks ground with a composite shovel made by Janicki Industries from recycled composite waste.

There are two types of telescopes commonly used to explore the universe. Optical telescopes, such as Hubble and James Webb, rely on visible light emitted from the stars, planets and other bodies in space and produce photographic images.

Better water equals better fish. That’s the thinking behind a 24-meter diameter fish farming system developed by AgriMarine Holdings, a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that specializes in fish farming and developing sustainable aquaculture technologies.

The historic “first weld” of the Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) Orion is set to take place on May 1 at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans. Building on the experience of the Exploration Flight Test -1 (EFT-1) Orion, this new spacecraft will be constructed for a major test flight on the maiden mission...

At the heart of innovation lies the search for improvement — a better, faster, more efficient way. A less expensive way. In 1993, Peter Janicki, an engineer, and Founder and CEO of Janicki Machine Design answered innovation’s call and revolutionized composites fabrication for the marine manufacturing industry.

The Space Launch System (SLS) will be the next heavy-lift launch vehicle for the National Aeronautics and Space Admin. (NASA, Washington D.C.). Composites have been chosen for both the launch vehicle structures and tooling because they offer performance and cost advantages over metals.

Many in the composites industry know that Janicki Industries introduced computer numerical control (CNC)-machined tooling to the marine industry and that it specializes in large, technically complex composite tools. But on a recent tour of its facilities, HPC discovered that this is only the top ply of an intriguing stack of layers.

Sometimes, when I tell someone from the composites industry that I am the editor of HPC, I hear this refrain (or similar): “That’s interesting. You must see a lot interesting composites facilities.” Well, yes and no. Yes, we are invited to visit some great composites manufacturing plants…

Technicians from Janicki Industries in Hamilton, Wash., work in collaboration with NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to build part of the Space Launch System, NASA’s next-generation launch vehicle.

By themselves, they don’t look like much — black threads thinner than strands of human hair, almost delicate to the touch. But weave those fine carbon fibers together in a fabric, coat them with a resin to hold them together, and now you have a material with which to build car bodies, airplane fuselages, boat...