GREATER THAN ITS PARTS

REPRINT OF AUG/SEPT 2012
AEROMETALS
GREATER THAN ITS PARTS
COMPANY PROFILE AEROMETALS
GREATER THAN
ITS PARTS
2 verticalmag.com
ALTHOUGH IT’S KNOWN BEST IN THE HELICOPTER
INDUSTRY AS AN MD 500 PARTS SUPPLIER,
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S AEROMETALS DOES A LOT
MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE.
Story by Elan Head | Photos by Sheldon Cohen
August/September 2012 3
COMPANY PROFILE AEROMETALS
M
PREVIOUS PAGE:
LEFT Aerometals has 125 employees
working out of a 75,000-square-foot
facility in El Dorado Hills, Calif.
CENTER Co-owner Guy Icenogle
discusses manufacturing tailbooms
with Bob Betts.
RIGHT The Aerometals brand is
associated in the helicopter industry
primarily with MD500 parts, but the
company’s capabilities extend well
beyond that.
4 verticalmag.com
Casey Grisel programs Aerometals’ water-jet cutter to cut aluminum plate. The water-jet cutter is one
of many specialty apparatuses that give Aerometals comprehensive manufacturing capabilities.
Most people in the helicopter industry know Aerometals as a
supplier of MD 500 parts. That’s not surprising: the company is
a leading provider of parts manufacturer approval (PMA) parts
for the MD 500, and hundreds of operators around the world
rely on Aerometals to keep their machines flying.
What many of these operators don’t realize, however, is that
Aerometals is much, much more than just an MD 500 parts
supplier. With 125 employees working out of an impressive,
75,000-square-foot facility in El Dorado Hills, Calif. (about
30 miles east of Sacramento), Aerometals has the ability to
design and create virtually anything out of metal. And so it
does, manufacturing an enormous variety of aerospace parts
for the United States Department of Defense (DoD), in addition
to hundreds of MD 500 parts. Among its other major contracts,
Aerometals manufactures brake load cells for the Boeing 787
and supports TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-command-link guided) missile systems for the government of South
Korea. Moreover, having recently acquired FDC/Aerofilter (see
p.17, Vertical, June-July 2010), Aerometals also manufactures a
wide range of helicopter inlet barrier filter systems (IBFs), and
is in the process of certifying even more IBFs.
With worldwide sales of $33 million US last year, Aerometals
is clearly more than just a parts supplier — it’s an aerospace
company with a global reach. Observed Aerometals co-owner
Rex Kamphefner, “Every shop-floor tour I give elicits the same
response: ‘Wow, I didn’t know you did so many different things!’”
COMBINED STRENGTHS
To truly appreciate the scale of Aerometals’ operations, it’s
necessary to visit the company’s facility in El Dorado Hills.
Here, the main shop floor hums with the activity of 20 computer-numerical-control (CNC) machines, each of which cost more
than $100,000 US. These sophisticated machines are at the
heart of Aerometals’ manufacturing operations, used to transform three-dimensional CAD (computer-aided design) models
into metal parts with mind-bogglingly complex surfaces. “We
have a lot of old-school machinists who manufacture nearly
miraculous things on a daily basis using five-axis [CNC] mills,
and do it with astonishing precision,” said Kamphefner. “We
like titanium forgings, magnesium castings, Hastelloy, Inconel
— not even carbon fiber can stop us.” But it’s not all machining: a few feet away, journeyman welders are creating 11-foot
long titanium ducts with diabolical S-curves for the Lockheed
C-5A Galaxy military transport plane.
Supplementing the CNC equipment are a number of other
specialty apparatuses — such as a water-jet cutter, a laser
part marker, high-speed balancing machines, an Instron fatigue
test machine, a press brake and an autoclave — that round out
the company’s manufacturing capabilities. Noted Aerometals’
other co-owner, Guy Icenogle: “This is a business where you
have to buy a couple of $100,000 machines every year, just to
keep up.”
Aerometals doesn’t just manufacture aerospace parts, however: it also designs them, employing 30 engineers who work
in offices adjacent to the manufacturing shop. All drawings
created by Aerometals’ engineers are reviewed by its own
machinists as part of the approval process. “Left to their own
devices,” said Icenogle, “engineers will specify tolerances
which drive up the cost of manufacturing, but add no [tangible]
improvement to the part. The advice of experienced old hands
adds a lot to the manufacturability of our products, and ultimately the bottom line.”
This unique combination of design and manufacturing
capabilities reflects the respective strengths of Kamphefner
and Icenogle, who came together formally in 1998 to create Aerometals as it exists today. Icenogle brought a strong
background in machining to the partnership, while Kamphefner
brought experience as an electrical engineer: before getting
into manufacturing, he spent 10 years working on helicopter
TOW anti-tank missile systems, mostly in South Korea, both for
Hughes Aircraft and an independent contractor. Kamphefner’s
language skills and connections in South Korea are also how
the company got into the MD 500 parts business, as the
Republic of Korea’s army uses a variant of the MD 500 to carry
TOW missiles.
Today, Aerometals offers more than 200 U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) approved parts for the MD 500, from
bearings to tailbooms. Indeed, Kamphefner joked, the company
offers so many different parts for the helicopter model, it will
soon be able to build one from scratch. Beyond simply replicating original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts, however,
Aerometals usually improves upon them (for example, its
skid-tube [tip] lights are cast aluminum —sturdy enough to
stand on — rather than the plastic of the original version).
“Engineers are always looking for ways to make things better,”
said Kamphefner. “It’s a curse.”
As an MD 500 owner and pilot himself, Kamphefner has an
added incentive to improve upon existing parts designs. In
fact, one of the primary reasons why he bought an MD 500
in 1998 was to better understand the needs of his customers.
Another reason was to demonstrate to the helicopter industry that Aerometals genuinely believes in the quality of the
parts it manufactures: “We flew the 500 to HAI [Helicopter
Association International’s annual Heli-Expo] so that the other
operators [could] see that we fly with our own products.”
Kamphefner still operates the MD 500 (and recently added
to the Aerometals fleet with a Eurocopter AS350 B2 AStar
The TIG welder from hell: Carlos Gonzales works on a plenum for a C-130.
Joe Wise removes a vertical stabilizer from the autoclave.
Aerometals purchased FDC/Aerofilter two years ago, but had been doing contract
manufacturing for FDC/Aerofilter for many years before it bought the company.
August/September 2012 5
Director of engineering Don Nelson is pictured at his desk with one
of the newest Aerometals PMA parts: tail rotor gears.
Aerometals paints its parts in house. Here, Marcos Espinoza
paints landing gear struts.
Aerometals supports some international customers who still use TOW missile
systems. Here, Derek Koonce works on integrated circuits.
acquired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department).
He routinely takes his employees flying, which is not only a fun
perk for them, but also drives home the critical importance of
the parts they’re designing and manufacturing. “What I like
about flying with an Aerometals PMA part is that I know the
fellow who made it. In fact, I probably took his wife or kids flying with parts ‘dad’ made.”
FOCUS ON QUALITY
Aerometals exemplifies the new level of rigor that has
become associated with PMA parts in general. Although these
parts still tend to be significantly less expensive than OEM
parts, they no longer carry the stigma they once did, thanks to
higher manufacturing standards and increased oversight. For
instance, before receiving FAA approval, Aerometals’ parts
are subjected to an exhaustive process of design review and
testing. In some cases, this can require a tremendous amount
of capital investment, such as the construction of a dedicated
transmission test cell for testing main rotor gears at full power
and full r.p.m. for 100 hours.
The manufacturing process at Aerometals is supported by a
rigorous AS9100 quality management system, which requires
strict controls on materials and products. For example, raw
materials are bar-coded upon arrival and tracked throughout
6 verticalmag.com
the manufacturing process, as metals with radically
different properties can look deceptively similar. During
manufacturing, each batch of parts is accompanied by
electronic “travelers,” which are something like “recipes”
for manufacturing. Kamphefner explained the analogy:
“If you are making the same part number repeatedly,
and you use the same traveler processes, procedures,
programming and tooling every time, you close out the
opportunity for quality escapes.”
Finally, Aerometals guarantees the quality of its
products through extensive in-house testing and external reviews. Finished parts are inspected using two
coordinate-measuring machines, in addition to manual
inspections to assure the quality of the last part made
is as good as the first. The company also welcomes
external audits. Said Kamphefner, “We are audited at
least weekly by someone or another — ISO [International
Organization for Standardization; for the AS9100 standards],
FAA, DoD, Boeing, Lockheed [Martin], Goodrich, Northrop
[Grumman], Sikorsky and the U.S. Navy, plus relentless internal
self-audits. Not to mention two IRS [Internal Revenue Service]
audits last fall, Equal [Employment] Opportunity Commission,
California State Employment Development Department, insurance underwriters, air quality resources board [California Air
Resources Board], EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]
and the fire department. That’s the short list — and I’m underexaggerating. Not being audited makes me paranoid. Besides,
any auditor who can show me what we’re missing is improving
my company.”
This strong emphasis on quality control has allowed
Aerometals to compete favorably for DoD contracts, another
cornerstone of its business. “We’ve done over 3,000 contracts
for the U.S. DoD over the years,” said Icenogle. “Every manned
aircraft in the USAF [U.S. Air Force] has some parts made by
Aerometals on it, except the [Northrop Grumman] B-2. DoD
has a ‘source approval’ process not unlike the FAA PMA process; in either case, the stack of test documentation should
weigh more than the part itself.” The upshot of all this effort is
that the DoD quality rating for Aerometals is 99.83 percent.
Aerometals also leverages its rigorous quality control system
Jake Compton sets up the CNC mill for his next job.
in the manufacture of brake load cells for the Boeing 787,
which provide electrical feedback to the flight control
system so it knows how much braking force is being
applied. This particular contract emphasizes not only
Aerometals’ manufacturing capabilities, but also its electrical competencies: “A lot of mechanical engineers are
scared of wires,” said Kamphefner. “But, we like electromechanical projects.”
Likewise, Aerometals manufactures electrical and
machined components for TOW missile systems, drawing
on Kamphefner’s long experience. “TOW is getting old,”
he said, “but some of our international customers still
use it, so we have gotten into reproducing obsolete integrated circuits using modern surface-mount technology,
as well as [reproducing] accelerometers, and actuators
which have gone out of production.”
Aerometals’ newest line of business is FDC/Aerofilter,
which it acquired two years ago. Of course, Aerometals
had been doing contract manufacturing for FDC/
Aerofilter for 10 years before it bought the company, so
it wasn’t exactly new to the filter business. And since
the acquisition, Aerometals has devoted more of its
engineers to developing new filter models: inlet barrier
filters for the Sikorsky S-76D and S-92, AgustaWestland
AW139, and Eurocopter EC225 are currently in progress.
The commitment is a serious one, as creating new filters
is a time-consuming process: FAA certification requires a
series of tests that can span many months — and some
of these tests are involved, to say the least. For example,
said Kamphefner, his employees recently “made a chicken cannon to launch a one-kilogram [2.2-pound] chicken
at the air filter at speeds of over 190 miles per hour to
August/September 2012 7
prove the filter can withstand a bird strike.
It was fun — messy, but fun.”
FDC/Aerofilter director of sales Ann Cooper shows off the new,
lightweight carbon-fiber filter housing for the Sikorsky S-76D.
8 verticalmag.com
STEADY GROWTH AND ONGOING
LOYALTY
Uniquely, Aerometals is defined as much
by its employees as by the products it
creates.
At Aerometals, there is a pervasive
culture of innovation, with self-motivated
employees constantly finding better,
more efficient ways of doing things.
Appropriately, the mood on the shop
floor is strikingly upbeat. Remarked
Kamphefner, “Its interesting — negative
employees tend to find their way out the
door. We do a lot of things to build camaraderie, like whitewater rafting, barbecues
and coat-and-tie Christmas dinner parties.”
The results of those efforts are also
seen in employee retention and loyalty.
For instance, although Aerometals hires
talented machinists and welders from outside the company, many of its employees
have worked their way up through the
ranks. And, even with Aerometals doubling in size over the last six years, nearly
half its employees have been with the
company for more than seven years.
As a next step, human resources manager Lorie Symon
said the company has recently shifted to a “team” model of
management, with manufacturing employees working in small
groups with “team leaders” — selected for their leadership
and motivational skills — rather than supervisors. The goal,
explained Symon, is to not only improve workplace efficiencies,
but to also preserve the small-company spirit of camaraderie
as Aerometals continues to grow.
And, that growth doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime soon.
“Every year is so good, we wonder how we’re going to top it,
but somehow we always manage to,” remarked Symon.
Kamphefner agreed, noting that, “I’ve been saying the same
thing since 2003: ‘Last year was the best year ever.’ ”
Even with all the company’s prior and planned future growth,
though, MD 500 operators can rest easy: the helicopter will
remain an important part of Aerometals’ business plan for the
foreseeable future. Its success in other sectors simply demonstrates the breadth and depth of its manufacturing capabilities
— capabilities that will no doubt be applied to its constantly
expanding product line in years to come. As such, both figuratively and literally, Aerometals really does seem to be greater
than the sum of its parts.
Elan Head is an FAA Gold Seal flight instructor with helicopter
and instrument helicopter ratings. She holds
commercial helicopter licenses in the U.S.,
Canada and Australia, and is also an awardwinning journalist who has written for a
diverse array of magazines and newspapers
since the late-1990s.