Querétaro, Mexico, April 12, 2024; Safran S.A., is a French multinational aerospace and defense corporation that designs, develops and manufactures aircraft engines, helicopter engines, spacecraft propulsion systems as well as various other aerospace and military equipment. https://www.safran-group.com/

It’s many product offerings include aerospace landing gear which is our focus today.

​Safran Landing Systems Mexico, is located in the center of Mexico’s aerospace industry in Querétaro, Mexico alongside such companies as Airbus and Bombardier. This facility, which supplies firms such as Airbus and Boeing entered production roughly 14 years ago and currently employees approximately 350 people.

The plant is immaculate as you would expect and this includes their heat treat department which is our focus today.

The main feature of the heat treat department are two “gantry” style furnaces provided by furnace builder “Codere” of Switzerland. The configuration includes two high heat furnaces with working dimensions of 2 meters X 5 meters (6’ X 15’), a shared oil quench and two tempers. Atmosphere is provided by a Nitrogen/Methanol system with natural gas addition for controlling carbon potential. A “gantry” style furnace means the parts are lowered into the furnace with the retort transferred over the load at which point the parts are raised into the retort.

Back Row; Jordan Montgomery, Salvador Murillo, General Manager, SSi Mexico, Adab Márquez Núñez,, SSi Mexico, Gord Montgomery. Front row center; Erika Cristino, Safran, Metallurgist

Incidentally this furnace configuration differs slightly from another Safran Landing Gear facility, this one located in Mirabel, Quebec, Canada. The Mirabel plant produces very similar products, however in their case they have chosen a “pit” style furnace combined with an endothermic atmosphere. The photo below shows an overview of the heat treat department which features one furnace combined paired with a pit temper and oil quench tank. In both cases though the furnace atmosphere is controlled with oxygen probes combined with 3 gas analysers.