In-house equipment
In-house capabilities
North Aircraft has in-house capabilities that cover all aspects of aerospace production. Our expertise ranges from engineering and design to detail parts manufacture, component assembly, structural testing, systems testing, painting, and final airframe assembly.
In-house equipment
Our manufacturing equipment and capabilities include:
- Climate controlled composites centre (12,000 sq ft)
- Automated Laminating Machine (ALM)
- Large air filtered trimming booth (44’x12’x10′)
- Large pre/post-cure batch oven for curing up to 400°F / 204°C (48’x12’x8′)
- Large semi-down draft spray booth with curing up to 125°F / 52°C (44’x12’x10′)
- Large daily process warming room 150°F / 65°C (48’x18’x8′)
- Leica laser tracking system
- Paste mixing booth
- CNC Router
- Hydraulic test equipment for full scale structural testing
- Test control and Data Acquisition System (250 channels)
- Quality Control Laboratory with DSC testing equipment
ALM
We operate an Automated Laminating Machine (ALM) which allows us to impregnate carbon fibre or fibreglass materials with resin for an efficient and controlled composite manufacturing process.
- consistent wetting out of material
- accurate, programmable resin to fibre ratio
- 100″/min (2.5 m/min) average output of impregnated material
- 6x faster than manual wetting out of fabric
- up to 55″ (1.4 m) fabric width
Large curing oven
Our large 48’x12’x8′ pre-cure and post-cure oven can cure components up to 400°F (204°C).
- fully programmable ramp and soak curing recipes
- data logging of temperature profile
In addition to the curing oven, we also have a large daily process warming room (48’x18’x8′) up to 150°F (65°C).
Air-filtered trimming booth
Our air-filtered trimming booth (44’x12’x10′) can hold large components, making it possible to trim and/or grind parts or larger assembled parts.
The booth has an auto-purging HEPA filtration system with a 10,000 CFM capacity (AirWall).
Industrial spray booth
We use a semi-downdraft spray booth (44’x12’x10′) to apply release agents, primer, and paints including top coat to molds, components, and complete assemblies.
The spray booth has the ability to be programmed to cure/bake at temperatures up to 125°F/52°C.
Full-scale structural testing
We developed in-house equipment to perform structural load testing of components and structures, including:
- targeted load application
- static load
- fatigue load
- HBK MGCPlus data acquisition (250 channels)
- MOOG smart test controller and actuation systems
Leica laser tracker system
North Aircraft uses an industrial Leica laser tracker system for precise measurements during the assembly and inspection of medium to large parts and components.
DSC
Our Quality Assurance (QA) laboratory utilizes DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimeter) instrumentation to perform continuous material quality inspection using test samples from production.
QA tests the resin cure reactions daily, to ensure that the final cured resin meets the required specifications.
