Aerospace:

L-3 Comminications, Boeing, North Island Navy Base for Ground Planes emergency services.

Goodbody Gear has over 40 years of aerospace background, working with all types of aerospace components. We have experience in many fields, from Quality Inspection, Machining, Welding, Engineering, R&D Development, and much more. Our experience is much diversified. Some of our projects have been, but not limited to.

Rich Goodbody was involved in many R&D projects including the original development of the transition duct’s for the F-22. This project was originally a competition between G.E. and Pratt and Whitney. Both with different concepts, but both achieved very amazing results and improvements of handling and maneuverability. He was very instrumental in working with Engineering to develop many different processes to make both of these duct assemblies successful. This took many hours of Electron beam Welding development, and many hours of T.I.G. welding development, along with some very elaborate tooling for these projects. The G.E Duct was originally composed of hot formed sections of 6-2-4-2 Titanium and Electron beam welded together, with many strategically placed details that were T.IG. welded into place to make the duct function. The Pratt and Whitney Duct was made out of a new proprietary alloy of Titanium they called Alloy “C”. This Duct was made out of sections of material that was hot formed and Electron beam welded together.

One section of the duct that was very difficult to weld together, because of the nature of the alloy, had to be semi automatically T.I.G. Welded together inside of a very large rotating weld purge chamber. This was all achieved using many different technologies including a seam tracker to track the joint, an automatic arc voltage controller “AVC” to maintain proper torch height during weld revolution. And a wire feed system t0 fill the machined weld joint which was a thickness of .350 thick. These process tock two operators to maintain all of the systems to achieve this weld process and took four hours of nonstop weld to complete, while maintaining a minimum part temperature of 5oo degrees.

Rich has worked on a project for NASA for an oxygen containment container which was made from 15-3-3-3 Titanium. Some of these details were roll formed and Automatic T.I.G. welded together. Some of them were machined out of solid billet material to be able to have all of the necessary fetchers needed for all of the mounting hardware. Two of the details were spun formed section’s to maintain the proper spherical parabolas’ for the end pieces. This assembly had to all be specially purged to maintain an atmosphere of less than 40 parts per million of oxygen prior to tack welding, and maintained until the project was completely welded together.

Another project was a solid gas generator for the Trident D-5 missile platform system. This system is used today to propel the Warhead platform in to position to drop multiple warheads as needed; it then relocates itself to the next position for the next target. This generator was made from 6-AL-4-V Titanium forgings with a cast Titanium elbow that was Electron Beam welded to a Niobium formed reducer. This elbow assembly was then specially tooled into place for it to be Electron Beam Welded into the canister. The access was difficult and had to be welded at a 26” gun to work distance. This was accomplished with a High K.V. Hamilton Standard Electron beam Welding Machine. Once this was completed, the elbow had to be finally positioned by a manual T.I.G. cosmetic weld that had to be strategically placed so that the weld shrinkage would control the pointing of the nozzle. The final location had to be positioned within .030 true position. This was then verified by a CMM prior to final inspection.