News

Dr. Fehrenbacher - Gregg Popvich after Washington Wizards - San Antonio Spurs game March 24

Dr. Fehrenbacher, Director of Technology, Technology Assessment and Transfer (TA&T), and Gregg Popovich, Coach of the San Antonio Spurs together with Margaret “Gie” Parsons after Washington Wizards-San Antonio Spurs game March 24 one week before Popovich was induced into the NBA Hall of Fame. Popovich is the winningest coach in NBA history, the architect of five San Antonio NBA championships and USA Basketball gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He led the class of Hall of Fame Inductees on April 1.

Fehrenbacher coached Popovich and Gie Parsons’ brother, 6’ 10” All American Cliff Parsons to several Military Championships and National AAU championships in the 70s. Big Cliff was TA&T’s Optical Ceramics production manager until his unfortunate death in 2010. POP as he is called and Fehrenbacher have been good friends for 53 years.

SINTX Technologies Acquires Technology Assessment and Transfer, Inc.

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SINTX Technologies, Inc. (www.sintx.com) (NASDAQ: SINT) (“SINTX” or the “Company”), an original equipment manufacturer of advanced ceramics, announced the acquisition of Technology Assessment and Transfer, Inc. (TA&T; https://www.techassess.com/), significantly increasing SINTX’s capabilities in the aerospace, defense, and biomedical markets.

TA&T on the Cover of Manufacturing Technology Insights Magazine

Manufacturing Technology Insights – February, 2021 – Dr. Larry Fehrenbacher, president of Technology Assessment & Transfer, Inc. (TA&T), dedicated 20 years of his life to strengthening the technical capabilities of the U.S. Air Force as an active duty military officer. While he gained immense knowledge, skills, and experience as an advanced materials researcher and technology manager in the Air Force, his passion for sports played the seminal role in carving a visionary leader out of him in the Additive Manufacturing (AM) arena. As a successful player/coach for Air Force and Armed Forces Basketball Teams, he acquired values that he carries to this day. Getting the fundamentals right, extracting top performance from his team, treating each player differently to optimize individual and team performance, and employing new methods to outplay the opponent were his keys to success. He and his wife Sharon founded TA&T in 1983 to develop advanced materials and technologies and get them out of the laboratory environment into the real world.

TA&T Ultra-Lightweight Armor Qualified for Ground Combat Vehicles and Helicopters

Annapolis, MD – March 3, 2020 – TA&T Spinel Armor is the lightest known armor to pass the rigorous ARMY All-Weather Multi- Hit ATPD-2352R tests for Ground Combat Vehicles. The qualification of the Spinel Ground Combat Armor was administered by the United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in 2015. In 2019, Light Weight Spinel Armor passed all the ballistic, environmental, optical and vibration tests for helicopter Multiple Impact Transparent Armor System (MITAS) and is now ready for use on Blackhawks, Chinooks, and Apaches.

Transparent Spinel armor is comprised of a hard, Ceramic Spinel strike face with a proprietary laminate backing, designed to survive stringent ballistic, thermal shock, extreme temperature, sand/rain erosion and de-icing requirements. The armor is ideal for weight sensitive applications requiring force protection including helicopters, clandestine ground vehicles, riverine and fast attack boats, mounted gunner protection kits and personal protection in the form of face and riot shields.

3-D Ceramic Stereolithography Ceramic Cores Qualified for Turbine Blade Production

Annapolis, MD – January 2015 – TA&T’s CSL ceramic casting core technology is believed to be the first additive manufacturing (AM) method to achieve first article production capability for single crystal superalloy turbine blades. This breakthrough capability is being extended to CSL fabrication of the casting core and the mold (Cored Mold) is one piece. The associated cost and time savings for direct AM fabrication of Cored Molds is a major disruptive technology for new and complicated turbine blade designs.

TA&T Produced Ceramic Central to Discovery of Water in Martian Soil

Annapolis, MD – October 4, 2013 – NASA reported late in late September that the Mars Curiosity Rover discovered water in the soil of Mars. A Technology Assessment and Transfer (TA&T) component was critical to these findings.

Ceramic heater bodies developed, designed, and manufactured by TA&T are a central part of the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) instrument suite on board the Curiosity Rover. Manufactured via Ceramic Stereolithography, a form of 3D printing and additive manufacturing, the oven heater bodies can withstand the extreme temperatures, in excess of 1,500⁰F, required for heating soil samples. TA&T was selected by NASA to fabricate these parts due to the high expense of traditional manufacturing techniques.

Due to the oven heaters success in the SAM Suite, TA&T is currently developing enhanced and optimized designs for NASA. These next generation components will improve upon the capabilities already seen on the Curiosity Rover.

Ceramic Stereolithography, or CSL, is a rapid prototyping technique that builds complex shapes layer-by-layer. This enables previously unmachinable designs to be made. The CSL process has applications beyond space exploration, including those which have consumer and industrial applications. The process requires no tooling and therefore allows rapid prototyping of fully-functional ceramic parts. TA&T has been involved in the development of rocket engine fuel injectors, heat exchangers for cooling electronics in hybrid electric vehicles, ceramic molds for turbine engine blades, and electrosurgical medical device tips, among other development projects.