by J.E. Pritchard & R. Laub

When joining aluminum for aerospace electronics, brazing often is the most practical choice for creating a continuous all-metal joint interface.

Because of its light weight and excellent thermal conductivity, aluminum often is the material of choice for assemblies that house or cool airborne electronics. Aluminum’s properties are particularly important in combat aircraft. Weight minimization becomes a major design consideration for many components going into these aircraft. Thermal conductivity is especially important in the electronics packages because of the heat problems created by the dense packing of powerful systems in limited spaces. The complex aluminum enclosures, chassis and heat dissipators used in military avionics systems often are manufactured from numerous individual components, which must then be joined.

Because of its light weight and good thermal conductivity, aluminum is often the material of choice for assemblies that house or cool electronics. These complex assemblies often are manufactured from numerous individual components that must be joined. There are many ways to join aluminum including mechanical fastening (screws, rivets, etc.), adhesive bonding, welding and brazing. The selection of a joining process must be based on a careful analysis of the service requirements and the materials involved.

As a world leader in vacuum oil quenching of large aerospace components, VAC AERO is preparing for increases in commercial aircraft production that are forecast over the next few years. Despite the fact that production for portions of these programs continues to move offshore, VAC AERO expects to be installing additional vacuum oil quench capacity to support forecast increases in demand in North America. Indeed, some of the new large aircraft programs will require some of the biggest vacuum oil quench furnaces ever constructed by VAC AERO.

HVOF stands for high velocity oxygen fuelled and is a type of thermal spray process used to apply very dense coatings in a wide variety of materials. Coatings applied by HVOF usually have better mechanical properties than those applied by air plasma spray. The HVOF process is now widely used to apply WC-Co coatings as…

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Hot zone life depends on several factors including type of construction, type of use (ie. heat treating versus brazing), cleanliness of the load being processed and maintenance. In general heat treating applications, a properly maintained hot zone should last 5 to 7 years. Once worn out, it can sometimes be rebuilt rather than replaced. VAC…

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There are many. The Dayton Process BV is the only FIC process that uses Teflon as a source of the fluoride ion. This is much safer to handle than the gaseous hydrogen fluoride used in other systems. Gaseous systems must usually be installed in enclosed rooms to minimize the risk of an HF leak and…

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Message from The President

We have had another successful year at VAC AERO and look forward to sustained growth in the New Year. We have enjoyed strong results in our Heat treating, Coatings and Furnace Manufacturing operations due in large part to the strength of the Aerospace market which is forecast to remain strong for several years thanks to the need to supply new aircraft to both domestic and developing markets.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VAC AERO Receives Two Cryo-Pump Furnace Orders with Vacuum Levels in the 10-7 torr Range Oakville, Ontario (November 16, 2007) – VAC AERO has recently received two cryogenically pumped furnace orders which feature polished stainless steel chambers, polished stainless hot zone support frames, all metal shield package (stainless steel and molybdenum), water cooled main valves and water cooled optically dense baffles. Together these features make this furnace capable of ultimate and operating vacuum levels below those typically available from diffusion pumped systems.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VAC AERO’s Coatings Plant Receives its AS9100B Standard Accreditation Boucherville, Quebec (November 21, 2007) – After conducting an assessment of VAC AERO’s management system to the requirements of the AS 9100B standard, Intertek Testing Services NA, Ltd. has recommended VAC AERO for the AS9100 certification which was delivered to the Boucherville facility last week.

Building a Lean Supply Chain

Lean shouldn’t stop with your company; to be truly lean, you must reach beyond your shop floor.

Companies of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions are attempting to implement lean manufacturing. As a company becomes lean, however, it inevitably runs into constraints imposed by its suppliers and customers, the adjacent nodes of the supply chain in which it operates. The logical next step to becoming lean internally is to try to spread the lean philosophy outward to those immediate trading partners. Sometimes doing so can bring significant improvements, especially when a large company is influencing one or more of its smaller suppliers. At other times it doesn’t work so well, such as when a small machine shop attempts to influence a much larger raw-material supplier.