SFM Technology News

Westland is an AgustaWestland company which is one of the largest helicopter companies in the world and designs and manufactures helicopters to meet the requirements of both civil and military customers. It has primary operations in the UK, Italy and the USA.  Westland was first formed in 1915 at Yeovil in the UK as a fixed wing aircraft manufacturer and has more than 50 years experience in the production of helicopters and has supplied over 2,500 rotary wing aircraft worldwide.  Its areas of helicopter expertise include rotor blade technology, avionics and mission systems integration, transmissions development and advanced training services for aircrew and groundcrew.

 

Given the global reach of its business the company has needed to develop a logistics programme to enable it to move large components from its manufacturing operations to its customers around the world efficiently and cost effectively.  This required a reliable partner with which to work to ensure that the transportation needs could be fully satisfied. 

SFM Technology, one of the West Country’s leading design and manufacturing engineers with many years’ experience working in the aerospace sector, have been an approved tooling design and manufacturing company with Westland Helicopters for many years and, as a locally based company, have been relied upon to provide a responsive service.  This often requires responding to urgent requests for support as well as meeting tight deadlines on other projects.

SFM was again approached by Westland Helicopters (WHL) Central Tooling department to design a universal transportation container capable of transporting large helicopter components to destinations around the world.

SFM applied its engineering capability to the design and manufacture of 2 entirely new containers.  These are required to transport two large components one of which is wider than the permitted width of a road container. The brief therefore was to 'tilt' this component once loaded on a suitable internal trolley, therefore reducing the overall width to within the road transportation restrictions. The containers are designed to be easily loaded, environmentally sealed and carried on flatbed lorries.  The contract, which involved design and manufacture, was completed to a tight programme schedule in late 2005 and both containers are now in use delivering components to customers globally.

 

This is just one example of many such projects which SFM have undertaken for the Central Tooling department and other departments within WHL.  Its tooling design engineers have completed many designs for all the aircraft variants manufactured by the company.  In particular SFM have completed a large number of build to print projects ranging from small assembly fixtures through to sets of aircraft assembly staging and transportation containers.

WHL’s Central Tooling Manager, Martin Southard based in Yeovil commented, “SFM have built a reputation as a consistently reliable and responsive supplier. All the products delivered by the company have been on time, to budget and to a high standard.  This has enabled Westland Helicopters Limited to place continued reliance on them as a key supplier to our tooling department”.