Marshall Aerospace: ACCURATE DIGITAL HARDNESS TESTING

Marshall Aerospace: Having enjoyed an unparalleled reputation for almost 80 years within the field of aircraft engineering, Marshall Aerospace is now one of Europe’s leading privately owned aerospace companies. Based on the company’s extensive 800-acre site since 1937, Marshall Aerospace encompasses all of the capabilities of an aircraft manufacturer; it also owns and operates from its own locally established airport in Cambridge, England.

Marshall Aerospace’s long history of successful Aerospace-related projects includes the design of the iconic Concorde droop nose and visor. More recently the company designed an advanced ‘space-sled’ for medical research, which flew 121 orbits in the space shuttle Challenger. Marshall Aerospace boasts considerable experience in the conversion, modification and maintenance of military, corporate and civil aircraft. The company’s many areas of expertise, including design, manufacture, test and certification, and logistic support are supported by a dedicated team of over 1,750 highly trained personnel and an exceptional range of first-class facilities housed within the company’s impressive, 1.2 million sq ft of hangar space.

When challenged with the need to procure an accurate digital hardness tester for use on crucial components, Steve Silk MBE, the company’s Manufacturing Support Workshop Manager, considered the merits of the available offerings from several leading material testing equipment suppliers.  Having explored the alternatives, Steve concluded that the advanced CV-600D digital Rockwell hardness bench-tester, now available from Bowers Metrology, best met his demanding specification.

Now employed within the company’s busy Manufacturing Support department, impressed by performance of the new tester, Steve recently enthused. “The accurate yet speedy testing routines that are a feature of the CV-600D, enable it to keep pace with the high volume and the wide variety of work undertaken within our manufacturing department. The robust unit has a large working space and is able to accommodate our large components; whilst the tester’s many advanced features are easy to access via its menu operated LCD screen. We use our new hardness tester to ensure the post heat treatment and post machining TEMPER compliance of aluminium and steel alloys. The hardness readings that we achieve also act as a confirmation that the correct materials have been used for a particular part.  All of the tester’s traceable findings are copied onto a relevant job-card and are also downloaded onto our database.“ 

Claimed by Bowers to be the most comprehensive tester within its price bracket, the CV-600D boasts many advanced features, including readings in 15 regular Rockwell scales, GO/NOGO judgement, load cycle indication and date/time display. The flexible tester is able to be operator configured to accommodate most Rockwell testing situations, whilst a simple conversion allows operation in other scales such as Vickers and Brinell. Aiding material traceability, the unit’s RS 232 output enables the transmission of gathered data to external devices, whilst the tester’s integrated high-speed, thermal printer is able to generate hard copy of all measured results.

For more information about the CV-600D hardness tester, click here.

Published on March 03, 2009 10:06 updated on November 10, 2010 12:07