Arcadia Aerospace Industries has announced a new long-term partnership agreement with GKN Aerospace to provide large composite airframe components.
Both companies have worked closely together across several aircraft programs for the last five years and have been preparing for the design and implementation of a ‘Centre for Composites Manufacturing Excellence’ located just outside Montgomery, AL.
Charles Bushman, President and founder of Arcadia Aerospace said;
The partnership with GKN strengthens our commitment to the aerospace industry to provide value added solutions to the increasingly more complex structures emerging. Together, we have unique synergies to provide the industry with unparalleled composite expertise in large structures fabrication and inspection.
To support this new partnership the company is developing a new facility located near GKN Aerospace’ facility in Tallassee, Alabama, less than 3 hourse from Airbus’s final assembly line in Brookley. When finished the new facility will be Nadcap accredited for nondestructive inspection in addition to an FAA approved repair facility servicing both metal and composite manufacturers. The new facility, scheduled to be production ready mid-year 2014, will be the inspection rate-readiness site for new composites intensive programs.
The facility will house the nation’s largest, multiple technology, automated robotic inspection system. The system, designed and fabricated by Arcadia’s engineering team, has the ability to provide internal defect and external dimensional inspections of components to 90 feet in length and 14 feet in width. Delivering a total of 19-axes of motion working in high-speed synchronisation, the system provides conventional ultrasonic, linear array, thermographic, and digital x-ray inspection technologies for the detection of internal defects. In addition, the new facility will house AAI’s next generation of automated overhead gantry inspection systems capable of handling round product over 14 feet in diameter.