Castor Engineering Inc.

Shortly after ringing in the new year, the team at CEI buckled down to deliver their first products of the year: 4 shiny, new sleeve valves were delivered to Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne at the end of January.

The project began in April 2010 when CEI met with engineers from PWR to discuss the possible application for the sleeve technology. Preliminary design work was completed in July, and the ball continued to roll as a contract finally arrived a month later. Soon after, CEI partnered with long-time subcontractor Project 14 to perform manufacturing and process development work for the contract. The partnership proved fruitful as a preliminary test, performed in early December, validated the valve design.

A major requirement of the program, and a primary reason that CEI valves were chosen, was a hefty response time specification. Each valve had to move from closed to full open in less that 80 milliseconds. There was uncertainty on this facet throughout the program, but CEI's trusted engineering was validated again when the test valve far outperformed expectations, opening in less than half the required time!

Both parties have met in consideration of continuing use of this design concept for the future of PWR's program, but no contract has been awarded for such work as of yet.