ADMA Products Inc. has operated quietly as a small, advanced-materials company that got its start making titanium products more than two decades ago.

But company officials predict its recent work to create high-quality titanium powder for the manufacturing of components will expand this company of six employees to more than 400 in the next five years.

A vote of confidence in that direction came last month when a national project that ADMA is leading won a $3.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

ADMA, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Texas A&M University have teamed up on an innovation designed to improve the efficiency of air-conditioning units.

The anticipated sale of Parrsboro Metal Fabricators Ltd. to Granby Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halifax-based Clarke Inc., was made official Wednesday.

About 50 people work at the Cumberland County company that makes oil, pellet and wood-fired furnaces and boilers.

“It’s certainly a difficult decision, but in our industry over the last little while it’s become increasingly competitive,” company president Steve Wilson said in an interview.

“We’re still coming out of the throes of a recession and our industry hasn’t been any stranger to that recession.”

Joining a larger company with a broader network of customer contacts made a lot of sense, he said.

he Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA) now offers an updated version of its popular and comprehensive metal fabrication training resource. The third edition of Metal Fabrication – A Practical Guide serves as the basis for a comprehensive training curriculum in metal fabrication, and is ideal for use in classroom and on-the-job instruction programs.

The book covers shop mathematics, blueprint reading, metallurgy, layout methods for precision fabrication, shop safety section and basic machine operations. New to the edition are topics on laser cutting and waterjet cutting, an expanded section on plasma cutting, and review questions at the end of each chapter.

The instruments of choice in nondestructive elemental analysis solutions for metal alloy verification, Thermo Scientific Niton analyzers provide superior accuracy in grade identification and alloy chemistry in seconds.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is the world’s leading manufacturer of handheld x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers.

Thermo Scientific geometrically optimized large area drift detector (GOLDD) technology delivers faster measurement times and lower detection limits – as much as 10-times faster than conventional Si-PIN detectors and up to three-times more precise than conventional smaller silicon drift detectors (SDD).