US-based propulsion manufacturer Beehive Industries has acquired the assets of Able Tool Corporation and its subsidiary Planet Products Corporation, two precision machine shops in the Greater Cincinnati area. The deal lands as the company’s Frenzy engine moves into full-rate production, following a year of ground and high-altitude testing of the Frenzy 8 and a $29.7 million U.S. Air Force contract that accelerated the program toward deployment.
The acquisition complements Beehive’s purchase 30 EOS metal 3D printers, described as the largest publicly disclosed EOS printer order to date, which more than doubles the company’s metal additive manufacturing capacity. Where the printers expand output of printed parts, the machine shops supply the finishing side of the equation: immediate, production-ready precision machining backed by more than 120 years of combined aerospace experience. Together, the investments target a manufacturing system capable of producing over 8,000 engines per year.
“This is a move for scale,” said Darius Ehteshami, Chief Operations and Finance Officer at Beehive Industries. “Frenzy is entering full-rate production, and our customers need engines now. This acquisition gives us immediate precision machining capability, proven talent, and the operational experience to scale with confidence, at the speed the modern warfighter demands.”
Two Centers of Excellence, Two Disciplines
The deal reshapes Beehive’s operating structure around dual specialized hubs: a Production Machining Center of Excellence in Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Production Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Knoxville, Tennessee. Cincinnati will handle high-volume machining while Knoxville concentrates on additive production across multiple metal printing modalities plus post-processing, each site purpose-built for its discipline in what the company describes as a production-first system oriented toward speed, precision and repeatability.
Able Tool was founded in 1984 by Dan and Jan Hayes, while Planet Products traces its roots to 1947. For their owners, the sale was framed as a matter of mission as much as business.
“Beehive is building something that matters,” said Paul Hayes, President and Co-Owner of Able Tool and Planet Products. “We’ve spent decades establishing a precision machining footprint supporting American manufacturing. Joining Beehive allows that experience to have even greater impact: a mission to power American defense while scaling at a level we couldn’t achieve alone.”
Vertical Integration for “Affordable Mass”
Beehive’s acquisition strategy addresses a bottleneck that pure printing capacity cannot solve: 3D printed jet engine components still require precision machining, finishing and assembly before they fly. By absorbing established machine shops rather than building capability from scratch, the company closes the gap between printer output and deliverable engines, a vertically integrated model built to satisfy defense customers who now prioritize high-volume, low-cost uncrewed systems over small batches of exquisite hardware.
Rocket propulsion firm Ursa Major has pursued the same buildout logic on the missile side. Ursa Major received $12.5 million from the US Navy and the Office of Strategic Capital, matched by its own capital for a $25 million total, to expand its propellant manufacturing, additive manufacturing and composite case winding capabilities for 3D printed solid rocket motors. It has since gone further downstream, breaking ground on a 400-acre test and certification facility in Colorado so it can design, produce, test and qualify motors entirely in-house, after logging over 450 static fires and four flight tests in a single year.
Recently, Firehawk Aerospace agreed to acquire a DCMA-rated rocket system integration facility in Crawford, Mississippi, a deal covering the plant and a 20-year lease on 636 acres, slotting it alongside R&D in Dallas, a 340-acre propellant and motor production site in Lawton, Oklahoma, and two company-run test ranges in West Texas, an end-to-end pipeline running from printed propellant to finished, integrated rocket systems.
Propulsion makers are no longer just adopting 3D printing, they are buying and building everything around it, from machining to testing. Beehive’s Cincinnati acquisitions follow that same vertical playbook. In this market, controlling the full production chain is becoming the decisive advantage.
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Featured image shows Beehive Industries Acquires Two Cincinnati Area Machine Shops. Image via Beehive Industries.
