Toray Composite Materials

Toray Composite Materials America (TCMA) is the Tacoma, Washington-based US manufacturing subsidiary of Toray Industries (Tokyo, Japan), established in 1992 to produce carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) prepreg materials — pre-impregnated carbon fiber fabric or tape in a partially-cured epoxy resin matrix — for the American aerospace and space markets under domestic production conditions compliant with ITAR and NASA/aerospace quality requirements.

Toray Industries is the world's largest carbon fiber manufacturer: its Torayca carbon fiber (T700, T800, T1100, M40J, M55J grades and dozens of others) is embedded in the structure of the Airbus A350 XWB and Boeing 787 Dreamliner (each approximately 50% composite by weight) — making Toray's carbon fiber arguably the highest-volume structural material in advanced aviation. This aviation heritage directly translates to space: the same fiber grades, epoxy resin systems, and prepreg manufacturing processes qualified for commercial aircraft appear throughout Western space launch vehicles and satellite structures.

Space applications at TCMA span the full hardware spectrum. Launch vehicles: SpaceX Falcon 9's interstage, payload fairing, and secondary structures use Toray CFRP; Rocket Lab's Electron upper stage uses CFRP; Atlas V composite payload fairings; SLS interstage structure and ICPS adapter. Satellite buses: Maxar GeoStar GEO satellite bus structural panels; SSTL Earth observation satellite structures; CubeSat deployer structures and chassis. Spacecraft mechanisms: solar array substrates (requiring extremely high stiffness-to-mass ratio with near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion in the 0°C to +150°C on-orbit environment); antenna reflectors requiring sub-millimeter surface accuracy across 2-10m diameter parabolas.

Key material grades: T700S (standard modulus 230 GPa, tensile strength 4,900 MPa — highest-volume production carbon fiber globally); T800H/T1100G (intermediate-high modulus for demanding structural applications); M40J/M55J (high modulus 395-540 GPa for dimensionally stable antenna reflectors and optical benches). Thirty years of spaceflight qualification across NASA, ESA, JAXA, and commercial programs enables simplified material qualification for new programs using existing heritage databases. TCMA's primary competitor in the aerospace prepreg market is Hexcel Corporation (Stamford CT, HexTow fiber and HexPly prepreg).