Written by Dan Sorenson, Arizona Daily Star
When you look up “counterintuitive,” there should be a picture of Robert Doucette, production manager of Advanced Ceramics Manufacturing, making one of the company’s ceramic forms – known as a mandrel in the tool and die business – disappear in a gentle stream from a garden hose.
These water-soluble ceramics, which can be turned into a drain-safe soup, are the backbone of this local company’s business.
“It’s virtually food grade; you can wash it down the drain,” says ACM president Steve Turcotte, watching the demonstration on ACM’s loading dock in the San Xavier Development Authority’s Hi:kdañ Business Park.