Northwest Aerospace News April | May Issue No.14 | Page 66

IF YOUR COMPANY DOES MACHINING,
TOOLING, OR COMPOSITE FABRICATION
Andrew Larsen
Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance
Members and Partners Manager
www.pnaa.net
PNAA SPOTLIGHT
You Need to Read This
W
By Andrew Larsen, Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance, Members and Partners Manager
hen I first approached Jake Matthaei from Technical Tooling about writing this
article, I sold him on it by saying, “The opening line will be ‘A banker, an entrepreneur,
and an engineer walk into a bar…’” to which he replied, “Yeah but we’re still figuring
out the punch line!”
While humorous, this isn’t entirely true, Jake and the team at Technical Tooling do know the punch line. In fact, their com-
pany, Technical Tooling, is kind of a one-two punch line. So, what is it? Just a proprietary patented material that has two
unique applications that BOTH save you money and time.
Similar compound materials, manufactured different ways, turn out two unique products. One: a porous compound that
feels a lot like pumice stone that the crew has named Vacu-Grip for its applications in the CNC process, where it’s used to
draw a vacuum across the entire surface area of an object. This creates a much more stable hold in contrast to the tradi-
tional channel vacuums that only hold suction across a minimal amount of the object’s surface area. The other: a yet-to-be-
named material currently referred to as the “8000 Series LM” for its applications in Lay-up Mold (LM) tooling.
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NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS