A Message from James A. Monroe, Founder & CEO
“As I look back on the past year, I am struck by a sense that ALLVAR has turned a corner in its path from a fledgling startup to a growing business, and I am exceedingly grateful. I am grateful for the generous support of our personal investors and government agencies that are making this transition possible. I am grateful for a team that is all in and willing to do the work to make ALLVAR successful. I am grateful for our customers who are using our materials to solve problems that really matter. But most of all, I am grateful for the relationships we are building. I am consistently amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise that I encounter on a daily basis. Our research would just be a scientific novelty and our products would just be lumps of metal without the ingenuity and vision of everyone we work with. So, thank you all.
Thank you for your interest, for your collaboration, and for your trust. Let’s go build something together.”
___
As the year draws to a close, we want to share the progress of ALLVAR in 2022.
ALLVAR wins US Army X Tech Manufacture conference
ALLVAR is honored to win first place in the US Army xTech Manufacture competition! This competition was designed to advance emerging technologies into acquisition systems by engaging new industry partners directly with the DoD. Winning first place out of 130 applicants reinforces the pressing need for innovative material options in mission critical systems. It was an incredible way to close out an already stellar week engaging with DoD manufacturing experts at #DMC2022.
___
Mirror Tech Days 2022
Back in November, ALLVAR presented on recent developments at NASA’s Mirror Technology Days in Rochester, NY. ALLVAR has presented to this core group of technical experts and technologists each year since 2017. Senior Optical Physicist Dr. Philip Stahl stated that ALLVAR Alloys are a “clear NASA SBIR success story” while discussing technology development and maturation. ALLVAR strives to work with our partners to drive the R&D pathway of our alloys and the technologies they enable, and we greatly appreciate our partners in the civil science community and their mentorship.
___
Technical Development
2022 has been a record year for securing funding for research and development efforts at ALLVAR. ALLVAR is developing large, scalable, ultra-stable struts and structures for 6-10m large telescopes. Through a new NASA SBIR Phase II grant, ALLVAR is developing statistically based design allowables to MMPDS (Metallic Materials Properties Development and Standardization) standards for Alloy 30. As part of this work, we will be manufacturing additional large struts to prove repeatability of our large ultra-stable structures.
We also began working with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in 2022, completing a Phase I and potential upcoming Phase II project for athermalization of telescopes with reduced SWAP-C.
___
New and Renewed Partnerships
In 2022, ALLVAR Alloys were sold to both new and familiar faces in a broad range of industries. Our customers ranged from individuals developing a broad range of optics to physicists tackling quantum computing and nuclear fusion.
ALLVAR’s mission is to take the scientific novelty of tunable thermal expansion alloys and bring them into useful game-changing applications in the real-world. We continue to be blown away by the ingenuity of our customer’s and partners. Through continued collaboration, we can make that mission a reality.
___
Looking forward to 2023
We are excited to share more details of ongoing and future projects in 2023. We wish our customers, partners, colleagues, and friends all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and success in the new year.
___
