William R Dahlgren

Bill and Audrey Dahlgren founded Airtech International, now located in Huntington Beach, whose products are used to build all planes. Their biggest customers are Boeing and Airbus. Their products are also used to build America Cup boats, Formula One racing cars, wind blades, and military and aerospace vehicles. Bill graduated from Kent State University in 1959, and did post graduate work in chemistry in Cleveland while working at Dow Chemical Company. His employer transferred him to California in the 1960s. While making calls to aircraft industry customers, Bill noticed that a certain process wasn’t working well: vacuum bagging, the process of creating formed parts for a myriad of uses in the aerospace, aircraft and other industries. Bill’s newly-formed company addressed a problem with the films used in vacuum bagging: he replaced PVA vacuum bags with his nylon film. The PVA film was not water resistant and would not take the high temperatures and pressures used in autoclaves to create composite parts. Today autoclaves use nylon film almost exclusively for vacuum bagging.