From industrial filament winding to OOA defense and aerospace composites

In its 30-plus-year history, Utah-based Nammo Composite Solutions (facility pictured in top image) has evolved its operations to meet the current needs of the industries it serves, from highly specialized filament winding (bottom right) to braided preforms (bottom left) to out-of-autoclave (OOA) processing for the manufacture of defense and aerospace components from rocket motor cases to reflectors (bottom middle). Source (All Images) | Nammo Composites Solutions LLC

The ability to adapt as market needs change and develop is key to many small- and medium-sized manufacturers’ success over time. This has certainly been the case for Nammo Composite Solutions LLC (Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.), a 2025 CW Top Shops honoree, which has evolved over its 30-plus-year history from an industrial pipe filament winder to a full-service aerospace and defense fabricator — while managing to stay true to its core filament winding origins.

The company was started as Composite Solutions in 1991 by founder Brian Lundy. At the time, he was doing consulting work for a variety of industries from offshore oil and gas to sailboat racing. A California-based marine client was looking for ways to produce its sailboat rudders using filament-wound composites. “In response, Lundy developed a new filament winder that was CNC-driven instead of CAM-driven, which was typical at that time, and presented the machine to the company with the thought of starting a filament winding machine business,” recalls Nathan Lodder, president and general manager at Nammo Composite Solutions. “But, the customer asked him to build the parts himself, and that became the birth of the company as a composites fabricator.”

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In its earliest years, Composite Solutions specialized in filament-wound products for industrial applications — including downhole tubes for offshore oil and gas drilling, and a variety of paper mill components.

Over time, interest in the company’s technical skills grew to other markets, including defense applications such as tube components for shoulder-fired rocket launchers, leading it to achieve accreditations like AS9100 certification and Nadcap. 

In 2007, defense company Nammo (Raufoss, Norway) began its expansion into the U.S., starting with the acquisition of Talley Defense Systems in Mesa, Arizona. Interested in creating a vertical U.S.-centered supply chain, Nammo soon approached Composite Solutions as well. In 2009, the acquisition was finalized and the company became known as Nammo Composite Solutions.

Filament winding, braiding, OOA manufacturing for aerospace and defense

Today, the 90,000-square-foot Salt Lake City facility, which employs about 100 people, serves as Nammo’s composites center of excellence. “The vast majority of what we do is build-to-print, though we do have in-house design and engineering services if a component needs redesign,” Lodder says.

The company’s in-house-developed filament winders are compatible with a range of materials, from dry fibers to towpreg to prepreg tapes (top). Braiding was moved in-house as well for parts requiring additional versatility. For example, pictured in the bottom image is a manufacturing test conducted using a 144-carrier braider to create a preform for a missile body.

While filament winding — including wet and towpreg winding — remains a core process, the company has gained expertise in many other processes over the years.

“We do everything from material handling like cutting and kitting, to molding of parts through a variety of processes — such as filament winding, resin transfer molding [RTM], vacuum-assisted RTM [VARTM] or hand layup — to bonded assembly to plastics or metals, machining, nondestructive testing [NDT], materials testing, painting, powder coating and integration of electrical and sensor wiring,” Lodder says. In recent years, the company has implemented automated work cells for some of its inspection and machining operations. “It’s definitely a focus area going forward and we’re looking at how we can better deploy it in other areas.”

 

Around 90% of parts produced today are OOA. This includes resin transfer molding (RTM), pictured in the bottom image showing manufacture of a launch tube for an MK 153 shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon (SMAW). The part is made from a braided fiberglass preform co-molded with a thermoplastic collar and electrical wiring. The red dye marks indicate braid angles to simplify quality control checks. Nammo also performs vacuum-assisted RTM (VARTM) as shown in the top image of a braided preform test panel.  

Parts are made from a variety of materials, mostly high-performance carbon fiber composites, and one particular specialty that Nammo Composite Solutions has in-house is producing its own braided preforms. “It’s kind of a niche technology and not a lot of companies have it in-house, but it’s very useful for certain types of complex geometries that you can’t do easily with filament winding,” Lodder says.

The company has an autoclave, but most parts — Lodder estimates 90% — are cured out of autoclave (OOA), either in an oven or in heated RTM or VARTM molds.

In terms of end markets, almost all of Nammo Composite Solutions’ customers today are aerospace or defense manufacturers. On the defense side, the site primarily builds products for its parent company Nammo, which “produces ammunition and rocket motors for a variety of missile and space launcher applications,” Lodder notes. “Within Nammo, we’re the only site producing composites at scale, so we support a few of the company’s key products. The biggest one is that we make carbon fiber composite launch tubes for M72 shoulder-fired rocket systems. We produce these and then send them to the Norway facility for system assembly and delivery.”

Among its finishing services, Nammo offers bonded assembly of composite parts with metal or plastic components. The metal end fittings on this filament-wound carbon fiber composite driveshaft are bonded with a structural adhesive.

In aerospace, the company manufactures primarily aircraft interior components, ranging from air ducts to evacuation systems, for both military and commercial planes. “We do some filament-wound tube-shaped components for aerospace, but most of it’s hand layup and braided structures,” he says.

A culture of continuous improvement: Processes and workforce

One thing that makes Nammo Composite Solutions stand apart, Lodder observes, is its culture of continuous improvement in all aspects of the company, from business practices to manufacturing processes to employee training.

In terms of processes, “There are a lot of efforts being done to consistently improve. One area where it really shows is that we have extremely low scrap rates — in 2025, we only had a 0.2% scrap rate overall, which in my experience, is pretty good,” he says. “We get a lot of ideas that are floated up from the frontline workers that we’ve implemented — ways to increase reliability or to do something a little faster, for example. We also have some engineering resources dedicated toward automation and are focused on getting that education and discipline in their toolbox to be able to do that more heavily going forward.”

Nammo produces a variety of components for commercial and defense aircraft, including this pylon for a large unmanned aircraft system. The pictured technician is finishing the part by hand sanding the edges after trimming.

In recent years, employee training has been a large focus for the company. “We want to ensure that employees have the right training and tools needed to do their job, and to know why they’re doing it, but also to advance their careers and grow in different areas,” Lodder explains. For example, most of the site’s employees have gone through a lean six-sigma white belt training program the company developed.

He adds, “We also do a lot of cross-training. We need to have some flexibility as certain jobs ramp up and down at different times, to be able to reposition people to be efficient. So we have our braiders train how to do RTM, for example, and vice versa.”

Investing in future growth and product ramp-ups

“Being in the defense industry, there’s a lot of activity going on right now. As our partners and customers intend to ramp up production on their products, our goal is to support them,” Lodder says. For example, solid rocket motors is a growth area for the larger Nammo company, “so in Salt Lake City, we’re looking at different technologies for composite motor cases and nozzles.”

He adds that the commercial aerospace industry is also seeing growth. “It’s starting to rebound after COVID-19 and to ramp up, though maybe not at the same level as defense. We want to always be able to deliver consistent quality products per the delivery schedule needed.”

Keeping up with growing demand in these markets has required Nammo Composite Solutions to make strategic investment in facilities, equipment, tooling and training, notes Lodder, “so that we can hit those higher quantities on a consistent basis. That’s been a lot of the focus lately — getting those investments in place and installing equipment in the factory so that it can be turned over to production. It’s always a challenge, figuring out how to double or triple production for certain products without having to buy triple the equipment. So we’re also reevaluating all of our processes to make sure we have the most efficient process flow and the right personnel in place. And we’re recruiting and hiring.”

An Olympic side project

A pod before assembly with the rest of the sled.

Sporting goods lie pretty far outside Nammo Composite Solutions’ typical realm, but an opportunity to support Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics is impossible to pass up.

Through the company’s involvement in 47G — a nonprofit organization that serves as a connection point for Utah-based aerospace and defense manufacturers — Nammo Composite Solutions was introduced to USA Bobsled & Skeleton (USABS, Colorado Springs, Colo., U.S.). As it turned out, USABS needed high-performance, carbon fiber composite pods that serve as the aerodynamic cover on the underside of its skeleton sleds — and Nammo ended up being a perfect fit to manufacture them.

“It was interesting to see how much overlap there is in the technology used to build an aircraft component or a skeleton sled,” Lodder says.

The skeleton sled parts were manufactured from carbon fiber composite prepreg, hand laid and autoclave cured.