About Us

Culture

Purpose and Values

Barber-Nichols started as a two-employee company that is still continuing to grow over 55 years later. With a dedication to the purpose and core values, Barber-Nichols has earned a 98% repeat customer base. In areas such as aerospace, cryogenics, military defense, energy, transportation, and more we are able to pave the way for the future. Would you like to help get rockets off the ground? Help create machinery that develops the latest medical technology? Help the military defend our country? And that’s just the beginning! Join us and start a career that makes a difference.

Purpose

Accelerating the delivery of innovative turbomachinery systems through collaborative customer relationships merged with integrated engineering and manufacturing to explore the universe, enable sustainable energy, and protect freedom.

Our Values

  • Connect passion with purpose
  • Foster each other’s strengths
  • One team, all in

Graham Corporation

Barber-Nichols is a subsidiary of Graham Corporation (GHM). Graham Corporation is a global leader in designing and manufacturing mission-critical fluid, power, heat transfer, and vacuum technologies for the defense, space, energy, and process industries. Graham Corporation is a public company with a main campus in Batavia, NY, USA. Dan Thoren, the previous President and CEO of Barber-Nichols is the current President and CEO of Graham Corporation.

Graham Corporation

Our Campus Continues to Expand

BN continues to experience rapid growth in current business industries including undersea power & propulsion systems, thermal management systems, space-based applications, and advanced power generation & energy storage. In an effort to facilitate this unprecedented expansion, the company acquired property adjacent to the current campus. Construction was completed in early 2021 and the new facility improves manufacturing efficiency by consolidating BN’s machining, quality control, and manufacturing support operations. Barber-Nichols continues to seek and hire qualified machinists, technicians, and engineers from the Denver metro area.

Bob Barber and Ken Nichols

Ken and Bob had a dream about working for themselves, doing things that could have a real impact on the world, and having a lot of fun in the process in Colorado. They founded Barber-Nichols (BN) as a turbomachinery engineering company in 1966. Early on, they saw the need to broaden the company’s capabilities to include manufacturing and testing their innovative designs. BN continues to grow rapidly from complex production and system integration programs. We are located in Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.

Barber-Nichols Set World Speed Record

On August 19, 1985, Bob Barber set the land speed record for a steam-powered car. The vehicle was designed and built at Barber-Nichols and traveled at 234.33 km/h (145.607 mph). The vehicle is currently displayed in the National Automobile Museum in Reno, NV.

50 Years of Excellence

Do you want to know more about how Barber-Nichols got started and what we’ve done to get here? Check out our 50th-anniversary video. It’s a fun way to get a glimpse of BN’s history.

View Video

Thank you for your interest in Barber-Nichols. 

We hope to have an opportunity to work with you on your next project.

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