News
Fairmount Technologies Recognized for
2023 Small Business Innovative Research Phase II
Last Updated: May 15, 2024
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On Thursday, May 2, 2024, Fairmount Tech was recognized by the Kansas Small Business Development Centers and WSU's Strategic Initiatives for two SBIR Phase II awards received from the Department of Defense (Air Force and Army). The award was presented by Wayne Bell, District Director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, during the E3 - Existing, Emerging or Exporting Small Business awards ceremony and reception. Jordan Peter, FT's General Manager, accepted the award and shared her insights on how the SBIR program works and how it has helped our company develop technologies that promise to revolutionize airframe component manufacturing from structural sections, for use in both production and sustainment by the A&D Industry as well as DoD depots.
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For more information on this year's National Small Business Week Celebration,
Wayne Bell, District Director at U.S Small Business Administration with
Jordan Peter, General Manager at Fairmount Tech
Jordan Peter, General Manager at Fairmount Tech
with the 2023 SBIR Phase II Award
Fairmount Technologies Hosts
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Last Updated: May 10, 2024
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Fairmount Tech (FT) hosted a team of machine tool experts from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) on May 1, 2024. The MDF at ORNL is a DOE research facility established to perform research and development to improve the energy and material efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness of American manufacturers. While visiting FT, ORNL staff observed live demonstrations of XtruForm, XtruMach, and XtruJog. Given the focus of the ORNL team’s vast experience in machining and machine tool research, discussions were focused on the XtruMach milling machine. FT hosted a small lunch-and-learn event where ORNL staff were able to present about their ongoing machine tool research and interact with FT employees, academia, and industry guests. FT is looking forward to assessing the takeaways discussed and further implementing the valuable information gained from this visit.
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For more information about ORNL, visit www.ornl.gov.
Fairmount Tech Demonstrates XtruJog at
STRATO-Tech ‘24
Last Updated: April 30, 2024
Fairmount Tech (FT) successfully demonstrated XtruJog's joggling capabilities for modernized Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) scenarios next to a non-flying KC-135 testbed, nicknamed STRATO-T. XtruJog was selected for demonstration of its capabilities for expeditionary repair of structural components such as spars and ribs, and manufacturing of metal parts at the point of need, in remote and potentially comms denied environments.
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While providing live joggling demonstrations on-site, XJ's team was able to participate in several real time Q&A sessions with multiple USAF ABDR units and gain valuable feedback from our warfighters and military civilians, as well as subject matter experts from within NCMS. FT learned that ABDR units take different extrusions and sheet metal starting stock with them when they fly out, to fix aircraft where they're deployed. ABDR personnel cut out damaged structural parts that need to be replaced, choose an appropriate size stock, and then snip and fold it into the curve required for it to serve as a replacement. This part then gets riveted to doublers to provide structural integrity. This is highly skilled, time-consuming, and stressful work under difficult operating conditions. Even after the aircraft is back at a repair site, ABDR personnel often need to cannibalize parts from other aircraft and sometimes go to great lengths to even splice extended sections from one aircraft to another because it is hard to make one-off spares for a series of stations.
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This customer pain became clear to us during the event and pushed us to try to provide proof-of-concept of some long-term plans for XtruJog that would significantly simplify their work. While at STRATO-Tech, we worked to make slight modifications to the machine and were able to successfully demonstrate on all three different sized extrusions that we tried, which were also made of three different materials, namely, 6061-T6, 2024-T8511 and 7075-T6. This prompted ABDR personnel to take our XJ team to the KC-135 testbed and show us the series of parts needed to repair the damaged area near the forward landing gear of one aircraft they are currently fixing. It was determined that XJ was likely capable of meeting this need. ABDR personnel will be scheduling a follow-up visit to our facility to discuss next steps towards realizing the potential promise of this technology, as well as to review the applicability of our other CNC machines, XtruForm for forming extrusions, and XtruMach for milling extrusions.
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The USAF, WSU's National Institute for Aviation Research, and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences co-hosted the inaugural event in Wichita, KS, April 22-26, 2024. STRATO-Tech is considered the aircraft equivalent to REPTX, a technology demonstration event that NCMS and the Navy co-host.
For more information about the STRATO-Tech event, visit
STRATO-Tech - National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (ncms.org)
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additional STRATO-Tech article found at
XtruJog Hits the Road
Last Updated: January 19, 2024
Fairmount Technologies' shipped one of our XTRU machines to an out-of-state customer location for an on-site demo. Our XtruJog team, and machine, XJ-2 visited one of our customer locales from January 8-11, 2024, where the team provided a successful demonstration producing a variety of joggles in various cross-section shapes and sizes!
Fairmount Tech attends DMC 2023 in Nashville
Last Updated: December 18, 2023
Our General Manager, Jordan Peter, attended the 2023 Defense Manufacturing Conference in Nashville, TN December 11th through December 14th. DMC is the nation’s annual forum for enhancing and leveraging the efforts of engineers, managers, technology leaders, scientists, and policy makers across the defense manufacturing industrial base. Leaders and manufacturing subject matter experts from government, industry, and academia exchange information and perspectives on defense manufacturing policies, strategic direction, best practices, funding opportunities, and the latest manufacturing innovations that will benefit our warfighters.
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While there, Jordan was able to engage with our contract sponsors, listen to Military and SME speakers and attend a wide range of technical sessions. Sessions addressed multi-disciplinary approaches to advancing existing and emerging technology areas to serve the security and manufacturing interests of the United States. Her takeaways from the various topics can be modified and applied to future projects.
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FT looks forward to attending DMC24 next December in Austin, TX!
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Happy Thanksgiving from FT!
Last Updated: November 22, 2023
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Check out our promo video from our exhibiting at WITS 2023
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FT Exhibits at WITS 2023
Last Updated: October 31, 2023
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For the first time, the Fairmount Tech team took two of their XTRU suite of machines, XtruMach and XtruJog, to the Wichita Industrial Trade Show at Century II Expo Hall on October 17-19, 2023. The local trade show features exhibitors from all sectors of our industrial community who present their services, machinery and equipment to the manufacturing community. Over the course of the three-day event, our XtruMach (XM-3) and XtruJog (XJ-2) machines were on display, and demos were provided for attendees and other exhibitors.
Look for us again at WITS 2025!
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FT Team at WITS 2023
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FT and AFWERX Collaborate on the Future of Rapid Aircraft Sustainment
Last Updated: June 18, 2019
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AFWERX awarded a Phase I SBIR contract to Fairmount Technologies this March. AFWERX is the new rapid innovation program at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Per the contract FT met with AFSC personnel at both OC-ALC at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma and WR-ALC at Warner Robins AFB in Georgia. With assistance from AFSC depot personnel, structural airframe parts were identified and manufactured using tool-less Stretch Roll Forming (SRF) technology.
As an advanced manufacturing technology, SRF allows for one-off stretch-formed parts to be made without tooling. This innovation decreases costs and lead times while increasing aircraft readiness. FT successfully demonstrated SRF forming of OC-ALC part sets. The Phase I contract resulted in two signed MOUs from both air bases in support of an AFWERX Phase II effort for SRF testing with the goal of insertion at their depots. Success would move the Air Force closer to its goal of 100% parts availability as part of its Rapid Aircraft Sustainment Efforts.
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FT Sponsors WSU Senior Design Team
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Last Updated: May 11, 2018
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The Fairmount Team had the opportunity to sponsor a WSU Senior Design Project Team during the Spring 2018 semester. The team consisted of four mechanical engineering students: Yucai Bao, Max Brandt, Colby Camp and Jia Koh. Their project focused on the joggling of aluminum extrusions, which is the process of press forming an aluminum piece in opposite directions to allow multiple parts to fit together. Joggling is used to form aluminum for the structure of nearly every aircraft. The goal of the project was to understand and develop a streamlined joggling process.
The senior design team presented their project at the WSU Engineering Open House on Friday, May 4th. The team was awarded third place for Best Design Project and Poster, and second place in the WSU Society of Manufacturing Engineers student chapter.
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WSU Senior, Colby Camp presents at Engineering Open House (left). WSU Senior Design team presents their Joggling project in class (right).
Encountering Innovation
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Last Updated: November 28, 2017
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The Fairmount Team was given the opportunity to showcase our Stretch Roll Forming technology at the Encountering Innovation Week, hosted by the Kansas Small Business Development Center at WSU. This conference provides innovators the opportunity to present and pitch their technologies. The conference included key note speakers, exhibits, pitch sessions and networking events. The Fairmount Team took part in the exhibit hall (picture below); this gave us the opportunity to present our technology to other innovators, Depart of Defense (DoD) Tech Scouts, industry professionals and resource partners.
Our Marketing Manager, Hal Pluenneke, was invited to pitch for DoD Tech Scouts. His pitch focused on the applications of SRF as a way of doing field and depot repair of aircraft structural components. A quad chart detailing the benefits and applications of the technology is provided in the button below.
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Grant of the Month
Last Updated: November 16, 2017
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Fairmount Tech was featured in WSU President, John Bardo's October newsletter as the Grant of the Month. This article further details the Department of Defense contract we were awarded in April, which was previously featured in the Wichita Business Journal.
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First Dollar Innovation Awardee
Last Updated: November 7, 2017
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On October 24, 2017, we were awarded the "First Dollar" Innovation Award by WSU Ventures. This award came one month after we manufactured and delivered our first set of revenue-producing parts to a customer.
As an awardee of WSU Venture's Third Annual Innovation Awards, we are proud to be recognized as an organization focused on innovation. After years of research, and developing our patented Stretch Roll Forming process, this is a major accomplishment for our team!
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AS9100 Certification Achieved by Fairmount Technologies
Last Updated: August 15, 2017
We are excited to announce that Fairmount Technologies now operates an AS9100C and ISO 9001:2008 Certified Quality Management System. This marks a new achievement for Fairmount Tech, the developer of the Digital Forming Process known as Stretch Roll Forming (SRF).
Our SRF process has now matured to the point of producing Stretch Formed components to aerospace tolerances and specs. This, combined with the quality assurance, ensures that the parts produced will meet your standards for accuracy, on-time delivery, and cost.
The scope of our certification is applicable to the “Design and Manufacturing of Component and Assemblies for Aerospace and Defense Industries.” This achievement for Fairmount Tech marks a new phase in our development.
We are commercially ready to supply stretch-formed parts and part-forming services. We are continuously looking for new business opportunities and to expand our capabilities.
Think of us for your rapid prototype and one off spare production needs.
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PS: Coming soon: CNC Form- a full service parts forming and finishing company.