Kyocera AVX breaks ground on new facility

Kyocera AVX recently hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for the company’s new manufacturing and design center for high-quality, low-noise quartz crystal frequency control products. The new facility will be part of the Knowledge Park at Penn State Erie research and development hub, which is located on the Penn State Behrend campus in Erie, Pennsylvania. 

Work on the new 49,000-square-foot facility began on February 17, 2024. However, the official groundbreaking ceremony took place on April 12, 2024, and the facility projected to open on April 30, 2025.

Kyocera AVX acquired assets of Bliley Technologies, a designer and developer of low-noise frequency control products in October 2023.

The new Kyocera Components Corporation (Erie) facility at Knowledge Park is described as a "high-tech space designed to fuel the development of cutting-edge precision timing and frequency control products engineered to satisfy the rapidly evolving demands of global military, aerospace, industrial, communications, autonomous vehicle, and commercial drone applications." 

The space will feature engineering labs, environmental testing labs, sound-sensitive measurement rooms, ISO Class 7 and Class 8 cleanrooms that will support the mass production of parts approved for use in LEO and medium Earth orbit (MEO) applications, and automated testing and assembly equipment. It will also support continued collaboration with Penn State Behrend.

Once completed, the new facility will enable the production of more than 1.2 million low-power oven-controlled crystal oscillators (OXCOs) a year. It will also produce a variety of temperature-compensated crystal oscillators (TXCO), voltage-controlled crystal oscillators (VCXOs), high-precision AT-, SC-, IT-, and FC-cut crystals, quartz and lead zirconate titanate (PZT), lithium niobate, langatate, yttrium calcium oxoborate (YCOB) transducer blanks, as well as an array of new products based on Bliley Technologies and Kyocera AVX IP.