Technology Assessment & Transfer has made great strides in scaling up the fabrication of transparent spinel plates for armor applications into larger and more complex geometries. Circular disks, rectangles, and trapezoids up to 20" on a side are now routine. Fabrication of near net shape window blanks in both flat and curved configurations minimizes spinel powder consumption and grinding and finishing costs.

Finished Spinel Plate

As hot pressed 11" x 13" curved spinel ~ 0.6" thick

These efforts have been driven by the superior benefits that spinel offers the transparent armor industry. Spinel exhibits improved ballistic performance over ballistic glass armor at half the weight and thickness, including the stoppage of multiple hit projectile threats. Prototype 11" x 14" armor windows have been successfully fabricated and delivered to the Army recently. High quality SPINEL MOSAIC windows as large as 14" x 4.4" to defeat armor piercing threats have been produced.

Another project for the Navy has demonstrated edge-bonded spinel plates with strengths equivalent to un-bonded monolithic pieces of the same size and a virtually undetectable bond line as shown in the accompanying image. This edge-bonding process is scalable to produce spinel windows of sizes much larger than anything offered by currently manufactured hard ceramic optical materials including sapphire and AlON.

Five (5) 7.62 x 54 R B32 API (Dragonuv) Rounds No Penetration

17" Trapezoid Spinel Window

11" x 14" Spinel Strike Face

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