Thoni Alutec Light Alloy Castings for the Aerospace Industry

Based in Poland, with excellent transport links to Europe, America and Asia. Thoni Alutec has 700 highly skilled employees engaged in the production of Precision Aluminium Castings and more recently the capability to produce Precision Magnesium Castings. Thoni Alutec has seen significant investment and expansion in the last few years and now offers complete casting solutions from design, encompassing casting, machining, surface finishing and assembly, a complete supply chain.

Castings are used in many different Engineering applications and with the correct design can be a more cost effective option than Machining from solid, fabrications or forgings. Castings integrate with other products / materials very well. With the introduction of new advanced technologies more complicated, larger challenging parts can be produced.

Markets currently served by Thoni Alutec are:

• Aerospace
• Energy (renewable and fossil)
• Power generation
• Railway
• Marine & defence
• Robotics & process machines
• Medical
• Automotive
• General engineering & architectural

Precision aluminium castings

From initial casting design, pattern shop, foundry, heat treatment and machine shop through to assembly, Thoni Alutec supplies aluminium castings from < 1kg and up to ten tonnes in weight. The integration of all processes in-house, provides short delivery times and a high level of quality. Only Primary grade aluminium is cast provided by certified suppliers.

Casting processes are Precision Sand casting, Low pressure die casting and Gravity die casting, using our vast experience and knowledge we will only recommend the optimised process that best fits the customer needs. Process choice is dependent on many issues ranging from casting design, strength, surface finish, dimensional tolerance and volumes.

Precision magnesium sand castings

This is a relatively new facility and at present the maximum poured weight is 100kg.

Magnesium casting alloys fall into two main types:

• Magnesium – aluminium alloys
• Magnesium – zircon alloys

The techniques for the above differ considerably, melting and casting of these alloys can be carried out using flux or fluxless techniques. As with our aluminium facility the integration of all processes in house leads to shorter delivery times and improved quality.

CNC machining of castings

A growing number of customers require a finished product to include casting machining surface finishing and in some cases assembly. In response to this requirement Thoni Alutec have installed a State-of –the –Art CNC machining facility with a total of 24 advanced modern CNC machine tools.

The most important advantage of this step has been the capability to deliver the final product to the client. Thanks to this solution, the customer cooperates with one supplier only, which shortens the delivery time, maintains quality and minimises costs. This allows Thoni Alutec to build a close and trusting customer relationship.

Casting inspection and testing

Metallurgy

Each foundry is equipped with a spectrograph for instant chemical composition and density index equipment for gas checking of the melts. The onsite test house carries out all mechanical testing for UTS, Poof and Elongation to customer requirements. A central laboratory carries out more detailed analysis for example micro sections from castings can be examined under Microscopes to assess the metal structure.

Non destructive testing

Two real time X-ray units are on site the largest can accommodate a part 12m (L) x 4 m (W) x 3.5m (H) this is one of the largest facilities in Europe. We can also perform Ultra sonic and dye penetrant testing to customer requirements.

Pressure testing

To define whether a casting is sound we can perform conventional pressure testing using air or water. For specific applications we test using Helium under vacuum.

Dimensional

With castings being made to tighter tolerances and to make sure we achieve these dimensions we have two automatic CMM machines and 1 manual CMM machine these operate in a fully air conditioned environment. Here castings and machining can be cross checked against customer drawings or CAD. To complement this facility we also have a high tech laser scanner which is used to measure and analyse tooling and castings.

Certification:

• EN ISO 9001:2008
• IRIS
• SVTI
• Deutsche Bahn
• DIN EN 473:2000
• ICS EU dual –use-regulation No 428/2009
• AS / EN9100

Certification for 2011

• NADCAP
• TS 16949
• ISO 14001

Environment

Thoni Alutec undertakes numerous actions to prevent or limit any emissions to the environment. Waste and surface water is treated, extracted air is filtered and noise pollution is targeted. Recycling is a key philosophy with over 95% of the sand reclaimed as well as waste heat from the foundry processes being recycled and used to heat offices and key areas of the factory