Ceradyne, Incorporated, is a Costa Mesa, California

Costa Mesa, California

Costa Mesa is a city in Orange County, California. The population was 109,960 at the 2010 census. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to a primarily suburban and "edge" city with an economy based on retail, commerce, and light...

, USA, manufacturer of ceramic

Ceramic

A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...

s products traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

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In addition to producing ceramic components for industrial processes such as silicon

Silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

 foundries and ceramic fuel pellets for nuclear reactors, Ceradyne researches and produces varieties of ballistic armour for both personnel and vehicles. The ceramic armor is lighter than regular steel plate armor facilitating greater mobility. As of September 16, 2007 the company was selling 25,000 sets of armor a month to the Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

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In December 2007, Ceradyne's lightweight armor was approved by the Army for use on military vehicles. Oshkosh Truck

Oshkosh Truck

Oshkosh Corporation , formerly Oshkosh Truck, designs and builds specialty trucks and truck bodies and access equipment. Based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the company employs 12,300 people around the world...

 will produce the first of these armored vehicles using the armor on HEMETT crew cabs.
Ceradyne is also the producer of ceramic Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts (E-SAPI) for the US Army's Interceptor body armor

Interceptor body armor

Interceptor Body Armor is the United States Army's primary bulletproof vest. The Interceptor design replaced the older fragmentation protective Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops body armor system, introduced in the early 1980s...

, and the blast-proof components of the Ceradyne BULL

Ceradyne BULL

The Ceradyne BULL is an armored personnel carrier with a v-shaped hull designed in a combined effort between Ceradyne, Ideal Innovations Inc , and Oshkosh Corporation in response to the MRAP II competition. The name Ceradyne Bull is a misnomer; "The Bull" is actually a trade-mark of Ideal...

 MRAP/MMPV vehicle project.

In January 2008 the company also received an order for $9.6 million worth of body armor from UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries Inc.), which provides jobs and job training to inmates in federal prisons.