Niacc-Avitech Technologies is an aircraft component overhaul and manufacturing facility in Fresno, CA. A subsidiary of HEICO Aerospace, the company repairs and overhauls starter/generators, fuel assemblies, cable harnesses and electronics, brake and hydraulic components, and other aircraft appliances and components.
Niacc recently received a customer request to add overhaul capabilities for landing gear shock absorbers to its portfolio of services. The technical specifications required load vs. position and cyclic properties certification of shock absorbers according to OEM specifications that would require new test equipment.
“The load issue was one of the real challenges,” Explained Rayan Kabeer, Niacc head of Engineering and Product Development. “For this type of shock absorber we were looking into 49,000 pounds. Everything other companies had was too big or too small. They could have custom made it, but it would have taken a tremendous amount of time.”
“We talked with ADMET about load and pressure and what the requirements were,” he said. “We gave them all the parameters that we needed and there was a lot of back and forth. They pretty much said, ‘we can do it.’”
ADMET specified an ExPress 300 kN (60,000 lbf) dual-column servo-hydraulic materials testing machine with a top mounted actuator (as specified in the CMM). ADMET also recommended the MTESTQuattro Materials Testing System, a Windows-based software controller with advanced analysis and reporting capabilities.
The unit arrived within six weeks. “We just had to hook [the machine] up with our computer and then load the software. We installed the load cell ourselves and it was pretty much plug and play,” Kabeer said. “The best thing about ADMET is that, with their software, we can control [the test] pretty much hands-off.”
