From the Sanskrit word for sharpening stone, the word paragon means a model of excellence, and we aim to embody this definition in everything we do. The company name originates from my great-grandfather's business, which began making Paragon Propellers in 1910. His firm supplied 70% of the allied forces' propellers during WWI.
—Taber MacCallum
CEO
Facilities
Paragon is headquartered in Tucson AZ, with offices in Denver CO, Houston TX and Washington DC.
Tucson Facilities
Paragon’s headquarters are located in a 16,000 square-foot AS9100 certified facility in Tucson, Arizona. We are near the Tucson International Airport, and minutes from the University of Arizona. Approximately 6,000 square feet of Paragon’s facilities are devoted to an easy-access highbay, plus laboratories, workshop, bonded storage, a ~240 square-foot class 10,000 clean room and Paragon’s ECLSS Human-Rating Facility. The remainder of the building is used for engineering design/analysis, conference rooms, and offices.
The highbay houses several flexible production stations as well as a Class 10,000 clean room. The highbay, laboratory and workshop infrastructure includes a portable Leak and Cycle Test Bed which is available to ensure leak tight integrity in a pressure or vacuum environment as needed. Our machine shop is equipped with standard prototyping tools: drill presses, circular saw, brake press, hydraulic press, solder station as well as traditional and CNC machining tools: manual and CNC vertical mills, lathe, hydraulic tube bender, cut-off saw, veridical band saw, combination belt and disc finishing machine. Our CNC machine handles stainless, titanium, aluminum, plastics and ceramics. We use the latest in CMM technology to inspect both in-process and finished machine parts and assemblies
The Research & Development Laboratory instrumentation and measurement equipment includes a 32-channel (capable of 56) DAC device, LabVIEW software for real time data collection, processing and control, various high quality VOMs, thermocouple readers, an anemometer, and vacuum pressure measurement devices. In addition, the lab houses flow and material testing facilities with gas chromatographs, a temperature controlled chamber (-125°C to 150°C), bench-top vacuum chamber, microscopes, time-lapse video, growth chambers, and standard instrumentation and equipment such as wet chemistry and environmental monitoring systems.
Paragon’s state-of-the-art ECLSS Human-Rating Facility (EHF) allows component and subsystem testing at flight pressure in a safe and cost effective manner in a laboratory environment. The unique facility simulates all ECLSS environmental interfaces, and allows testing of all failure modes and effects (including abort modes), along with the controlling software and recovery strategies. The EHF is also a training facility, allowing crew training to be conducted away from the flight vehicle, and in conditions more closely simulating the actual operating environment. This increases safety through extensive integrated ECLSS testing that could not be conducted on the vehicle. It also allows FAA safety approval of an ECLS system before integration with the spacecraft. Finally, it lowers ECLSS development cost and time and provides for testing of back-up ECLS systems under simulated flight conditions.
Paragon has licenses for ANSYS Multi-Physics w/ CFX, SolidWorks™, COSMOSWorks™, COSMOSFloWorks™ and C&R Thermal Desktop™ with Sinda/Fluint and RadCad™, Pro-E Wildfire, Pr o-E Routed System Designer, Pro-E Windchill, AutoCAD / Mechanical Desktop, MatLab, Maple, Mathcad, MSC FEA, Vitech CORE.
