When you think about aerospace materials, what springs to mind? Aluminium, most probably, or maybe titanium. Increasingly, carbon fibre-reinforced composites might come high on the list. What about copper? While it might not be so obvious, copper has always been an important aviation material. The venerable Boeing 747 contained 4,000kg of copper, 2% of its total weight. Much of that material was in the 274km of wiring used the aircraft’s electrical system.
Less mass, more value
Today, the pursuit of weight savings, improved efficiency and better performances is changing the way the industry uses copper, but not diminishing the importance of the material. The Airbus A380 uses aluminium conductors in its 500km long wiring loom. Fibre-optic cables have replaced copper conductors for many data and control applications. Yet there is still plenty of copper to be found in all modern aircraft. Copper mesh embedded in the composite skin of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner forms a vital part of its lightning protection system, for example.
Moreover, the shift to ‘more-electric aircraft’ concepts means the power and data communications networks of today’s designs are considerably more complex than their predecessors. While a traditional airliner distributes power from a single electrical equipment bay, the 787 has a network of 17 small electrical substations, supplied by four primary and two auxiliary generators. That has driven demand for thousands of high-precision copper parts, used in critical connectors, actuators and host of other applications.
Time to switch your source?
The development of the more-electric aircraft has coincided with the rapid expansion of manufacturing capacity in Asia, and the worldwide trend towards global sourcing. It’s no surprise, therefore, that many suppliers have turned to the Far East for the production of those precision copper parts. Today, however, an increasing number are re-evaluating this approach.
At Dawson Shanahan, we specialise in the production of high-precision single-piece copper components. Our manufacturing facilities are based in the UK and our customers come from a broad cross-section of industries. Over the past few years, we've seen strong increases in demand from customers in many of these sectors, including aerospace.
What’s behind that growth? We believe a number of factors are at play. First, there is the underlying strength of the industry. The UK aerospace sector has grown 39% since 2012 and in 2017 total sector turnover exceeded £35 billion. The sector’s strong performance last year took place against a background of relatively modest global increases. With worldwide sector output now expected to enter a new period of growth, forecasters are predicting continued rapid expansion over the coming years.
There are also macro-economic factors to consider. There’s no doubt that the fall in the value of Sterling in April 2016 encouraged many companies to look more favourably at the idea of sourcing from UK-based suppliers.
We believe, however, that the re-shoring trend is more than a matter of expedience. When companies move their critical component supply chains closer to home, they reap a number of significant benefits.
Most obviously, local sourcing dramatically simplifies logistics. Eliminating the need to ship parts half way round the world cuts order-to-delivery lead times, sometimes by many weeks. It saves significant cost too, especially for small volume or prototype parts that might otherwise require air freight. Copper is more than three times denser than aluminium, after all, that’s why the aerospace sector uses it so selectively in its products. And as the industry strives to improve its cradle-to-grave environmental performance, less transportation means lower upstream carbon dioxide emissions.
Short, local supply chains are more agile too. That has advantages during new product development, allowing rapid production and delivery of parts for test and validation. Cutting the order to delivery time allows our customers to operate with smaller inventories, freeing up precious working capital. And if demand or product specifications change, local suppliers can respond quickly to meet the new requirements.
Is it quality assured?
Then there’s quality. It would be disingenuous to suggest that producing an aerospace part in China means quality is necessarily lower. But when problems do occur, long-distance sourcing means issues are harder to fix. And there’s always the risk that large quantities of defective inventory are already in transit by the time a defect is identified.
More significantly, for UK or European customers quality assurance is much more straightforward when your supplier is just a few tens of kilometres away. Our customers can look at our manufacturing operations any time they want. They understand our processes and know we operate to the same standards they do. And if something isn’t right, we can work together to identify the root cause and put a sustainable solution in place.
And that brings us to the final compelling advantage: collaboration. We aren’t experts in advanced avionics or aerospace electrical systems. But we are extremely knowledgeable about the manufacture of high-precision copper components. We often sit down with our customers long before first part production to discuss their requirements, review designs and make suggestions that could simplify production, take out cost or improve long-term component reliability. And that close, collaborative relationship continues long after production starts, as we work together to refine processes, maximise quality and look for improvement opportunities that go far beyond piece price.
