Elmet Technologies

Elmet Technologies is the largest US-owned producer of tungsten and molybdenum products, headquartered in Broadview Heights, Ohio (formerly Lewiston, Maine), with AS9100 and ISO 9001 certification and ITAR registration for defense and space applications. Elmet's refractory metal products serve space, defense, medical, semiconductor, and industrial markets where extreme temperature, radiation, or density requirements eliminate conventional materials.

In space applications, tungsten's unique combination of properties — the highest melting point of any element (3,422°C), highest density (19.3 g/cm³, 1.7x denser than lead), and excellent radiation shielding effectiveness — makes Elmet products essential for several distinct spacecraft applications. Radiation shielding: tungsten heavy alloy (WHA, typically W-Ni-Fe or W-Ni-Cu) shields sensitive electronic components from total ionizing dose and single-event effects in the high-radiation environment of GEO orbit, the Van Allen belts, or near Jupiter. Elmet's WHAs provide 1.5x better radiation shielding per unit thickness than lead while being non-toxic and machinable into complex precision shapes. Thruster components: pure tungsten and tungsten-rhenium alloys serve as combustion chamber liners, nozzle inserts, and electrodes in ion thrusters and arcjets, where operating temperatures exceed 2,000°C during operation. Fasteners and ballast weights: high-density tungsten enables mass trimming of satellite structures to meet moment-of-inertia requirements within tight volume constraints.

For launch vehicles, molybdenum and tungsten components appear in rocket engine components including nozzle extensions (TZM molybdenum alloy for upper-stage nozzle radiative cooling), thrust chamber hardware, and high-temperature valve and actuator components. Elmet also produces tantalum and niobium products that serve similar high-temperature structural roles.

Elmet's manufacturing capabilities span powder metallurgy (sintering large billets), forging, rolling (sheet, plate, rod), machining, and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coating of tungsten for surface property modification. The company competes with H.C. Starck (now Tungsten-Fabrik), Plansee, and Materion Corporation in the aerospace refractory metals market.