About Astra Bond

Astra Bond is a Small Disabled Veteran Owned Business, proudly located in the Heartland of America, Topeka, Kansas. We provide Friction Stir Welding (FSW) solutions for a range of industries and components. FSW is a solid state bonding technique opening up new possibilities for your system. The bonds created with FSW methods are superior in resilience and strength compared to other methods. FSW also enables bonding dissimilar materials, opening up new design spaces.

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Founded by Dustin Hall, a former NASA aerospace engineer, he noticed early on during his academic and professional career, engineers need a more advanced manufacturing capability. While developing LOX/LH2 cryogenic tanks he saw there were very few options for welding the tanks together due to the material, and even less options for welding them to a different material. Other projects like battery enclosures, cold plates, and phase change material enclosures required very strong and precise leak proof bonding with no thermal distortion. 

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Each project had to compromise on various aspects due strictly to the flaws introduced by manufacturing. The amount of time spent overcoming a seemingly simple problem like distortion due to heat input was considerable as different techniques introduced separate issues.

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Friction stir welding would have resolved many issues but the options were slim, the lead time was long, and the cost was high. 

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Dustin is driven by his experience and now has the ability to provide a low-cost solution with a quick turnaround time. Attributes associated with FSW will allow engineers to explore previously inaccessible design spaces.