WFF A400M: Alestis starts the Manufacturing of the first pre-production batches

At the end of May, this photo showed the complex but promising start of the Wing Fuselage Fairing (WFF) A400M, project at San Pablo facility.

After the departure of the South African company Denel from the A400M program at the end of 2019, Airbus Operations awards Aciturri the manufacture and assembly of the Wing to Fuselage Fairing (WFF), who decides to subcontract the manufacture of the panels to Alestis, maintaining the assembly at Aciturri Assembly. ​ The technology used to manufacture this fairing is Hand Lay Up with sandwich panels so, as specialists in this type of technology, this work package is located in the San Pablo plant.

The program consists of a total of 113 part numbers and deliver a first set of spare parts is the short-term objective; For this purpose, tests are being carried out on two FPQs, considered as relevant elements due to their special complexity, the Door with 8552 resin and the Onglet with M21 resin.

From the Materials and Processes area, the main challenge has been to overcome the large number of tests required for these two FPQs, with a very short time frame. In this sense, they have underlined "the perfect coordination between the Laboratory, Alestis and Aciturri". From Manufacturing Engineering they highlight the complexity of the industrial project in all its aspects: "from the management of materials, the certification of special processes, the validation of tools to which the extraordinary circumstances derived from COVID-19 are added".

At the plant, they highlight the good coordination between departments, the support of the industrialization team and the experience of the team in project development, which is decisive in meeting the requirements of the program, with restrictive manufacturing regulations, and at the production level, with cycles of very demanding curing. ​ From the Quality area they confirm the development of all the project activities based on the APQP EN9145 standard and add that "in the month of July we will have the first review with Airbus of all the deliverables generated in Phases I and III".

With the launch of the manufacture of the first 5 pre-productive batches (1-ABCD), progress is made towards the validation of the 8 selected FAIs and subsequent official start of the manufacture of the 60 references, whose delivery is planned for the end of the month of July.

From the beginning of the project, Aciturri, as our client, has been fully integrated with the work team and the excellent collaboration between companies has been demonstrated to successfully achieve this first phase.