Last week, we reported on Dunmore Corporation, the Bristol firm whose products are circling the planet onboard a NASA probe. Turns out there are more made-in-Pennsylvania goods currently up there in the final frontier.
Die-Tech, a second-generation, family company in York Haven, makes components for “almost everything that goes into space from America,” says P.K. Dennis, Die-Tech's marketing manager whose father founded the company in 1974. And Vectron International's Military/Space Center of Excellence in Mount Holly Springs has been supplying frequency control products for space missions as far back as 1958.
Die-Tech precision stamps the tiny metal “legs” that attach to capacitors, the electricity-storage devices most recently installed on the Mars Rover Curiosity that is on a two-year mission to explore the Red Planet. Vectron is also onboard Curiosity.
Die-Tech provides its metal stampings to Presidio, the California maker of what Dennis calls the “Mercedes Benz of capacitors.”
“You don't want your [component] to fail when it's in outer space,” she notes.
Besides serving the aerospace industry, Die-Tech's portfolio also includes the automotive, medical devices, military and consumer electronics sectors. Medical devices and automotive are both growth areas, Dennis says; medical devices because of their high profitability and automotive because even though fewer cars and trucks are being made, those that come off the assembly line carry more electronics than ever. Another growth area, she adds, is in Mexico, where many U.S. and European companies have moved their assembly plants.
Source: P.K. Dennis, Die-Tech
Writer: Elise Vider