Tom set up a tour for me to see Next Intent with him today. Next Intent is a precision machining company which makes parts for NASA, JPL and similar agencies and companies. They make speciality parts that no one else can build. If they bid a job that one or two other companies in the world can do, its not for them.
Next Intent made the wheels and suspension for the Mars rovers. Each wheel was machined out of a solid piece of material and then anodized black. Similar to what happened with our prototype Puma bays at PFRR, they have left over Mars rover wheels sitting on desks as expensive pencil holders.
Another item they work on is the vibration isolation mounts used on NASA rockets to keep sensitive electronics payloads from being damaged. They make a variety of mounts from the very small that you can deflect with your finger, to the large mounts that connect the first and second stage of rockets. They also make vibration mounts that only move in certain directions. The entire floor of their building is covered in millions of dollars worth of CNC machines, lathes, and 3, 4, and 5 axis mills. They machine hard(er) to work with materials like tungsten, and titanium.
After seeing Next Intent we went to see Tom's friend's company, Architectural Iron. Architectural Iron makes very high end windows for very expensive houses. Their last customer was building a 50 million dollar house, the windows alone were half a million.
Next we to Tom's work and I got to see a little bit of the projects he works on. It has to do with grinding silicon wafers for use in making chips and processors. I would have to do some research to really understand what they were doing but it high tech stuff.
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