John Weller of Terre Hill works at Weaver Industries Inc. in Denver Tuesday. Weller was one of the lead machinists at Weaver who made the heat shield for NASA's Mars rover.
In this frame of a stop motion video taken during the NASA rover Mars landing, the heat shield falls away during Curiosity's descent to the surface of Mars on Sunday.
Weaver Industries Inc. didn't make any part of Mars rover Curiosity, but the Denver company helped the rover arrive safely on the red planet's surface.
The company machined dozens of tiles for the heat shield which protected Curiosity as it descended through Mars' atmosphere.
Weaver Industries specializes in machining graphite materials for foundries, such as graphite electrodes used in electric arc furnaces for steelmaking.
However, the privately held company had worked with Fiber Materials Inc., of Biddeford, Maine, which made the tiles, and Lockheed Martin Corp., which made the heat shield, and was asked to participate as a subcontractor.
Officials spoke with pride Tuesday about the role the company played in the historic feat.
President John Weaver, whose father founded the company, credited the employees. The firm has about 80.
"The people that did this are the ones that deserve all the credit," Weaver said. "Because our operators and people like Rick (Harding, project manager) that worked through this are the key."
At the same time, they were reluctant to detail exactly what the job entailed, citing "International Traffic in Arms Regulations," or ITAR, which are designed to safeguard U.S. security.
"With that, we can't tell people" what they're working on at the time, said Leon Good, executive vice president.
"I can't go home and tell my kids, my grandkids what I'm working on. I can just say, 'well, we're working on something really cool' and that's about it. You can't share that with anybody, really, other than in here," he said.
The company had machined the tiles several years ago in anticipation of an earlier launch.
Harding explained the tiles were made so they could fit together with room for about three or four sheets of paper between joints.
The tiles also had to be machined to specified profiles.
Workers dry-cut the tile, meaning no water or lubricating fluid was used on the cutting tools and tiles, as is often the case in machining, Good said.
"We weren't allowed to have anything contaminate the material," he said.
The company worked on mock-up parts first, which were subject to testing.
"They make you prove out every part," Good said of NASA.
At nearly 15 feet in diameter, the heat shield is the largest ever built, according to NASA.
The company also had to develop special packaging so the machined tiles could be shipped safely back to Maine, then to Denver, Colo., where Lockheed built the shield.
NASA was concerned whether Weaver could meet deadlines, company officials said.
"The burden came on us, because they (NASA) were originally going to make another heat shield with another type of material and it failed. And midstream, they had to make adjustments," Good said.
Weaver met the deadline, only to see the project shelved.
"They actually told us we exceeded everything that they expected of us. We exceeded the quality of the machining that they expected, we exceeded their timeframes," Weaver said.
The company keeps a low profile but has a long history of working on space-related projects, Weaver said.
"We machined the mold for the first heat shield for the Mercury space shot, when Alan Shepard went up," he said. Shepard was the first American in space, in May 1961.
Also that decade, the company machined the antenna for Telstar 1, the first communications satellite, and nose cones for weather rockets, Weaver said.
It also machined the lining of a fusion reactor for Princeton University and parts used in transatlantic communications cable systems, he said.
"We always say we've made things as deep in the ocean as man has gone and as high in space as man has gone," Weaver said.
Harold Weaver started the company in 1954 in his basement, making wood and metal patterns for the foundry industry.
Several years later, a customer asked him if he could machine graphite, his son recounted.
"My father said, 'I don't know what graphite is.' "
The customer replied, "Well, it's hot and dirty and nobody wants to work with it."
Harold Weaver responded, "Well, that sounds like what we do here," his son said.
