A record of random events, brought to you by Katrin and Jim.
Friday, January 26, 2007

Factory Tour  

Posted by Jim at 5:34 PM  [#]

One of my new friends here in Auburn is James, a British guy who works for GKN Westland Aerospace down the road in Tallassee, Alabama. They make fiber-composite aircraft parts.

He took a few of us on a little tour of the manufacturing plant last night, and it was really cool. Katrin wasn't excited by my description of it - maybe you have to be an engineer, or at least a guy.

James makes fan cases for the GEnx aircraft engine, which is going to go in the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350.

The case is the black cylinder around the big fan blades. It's about 10ft (2.9m) in diameter, and made of carbon fiber. A very impressively big part, with extremely high tolerances. It has to be light, but strong enough to stay in one piece if one of the fan blades breaks off and bounces around inside of it. Cool stuff.

Comments
Blogger Cat says:
nerrrrrrrrrd.
1/27/2007 04:55:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Tony says:
No, that sounds like a cool tour. I'm no nerrrrrrd.
1/27/2007 04:57:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Jim says:
This is coming from a PhD who teaches statistics for a living.

Katrin said she discussed this with her friend Brandi, who had been invited to go, and Brandi said something along the lines of "do they have, like, shoes or lipstick there?"

Mind you, this person is a DVM.

Tony, our wives have no business calling us nerds.
1/27/2007 06:35:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Tony says:
Hey, you should attend one of our conferences. Compared to my peers, I'm fly. I do not own any sansabelts. It's all a matter of picking your social comparison carefully.

You and Tony:
Neeerrrrrrrddddddles.

It's just lucky that Katrin and I happen to like nerdles.
;-)
1/27/2007 09:38:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Cat says:
Hee hee, that was me just above, not Tony. Forgot to log in first...
1/27/2007 09:40:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Katrin says:
I still think anyone who likes airplane parts factories is a nerd (and yes, Brandy said she would have been excited about the tour if lip gloss was involved)...of course the same night Jim was at the factory tour, I was reading about median sternotomies and super excited about getting to do one the next day. That's a different sort of nerdiness, I suppose...
1/28/2007 09:21:00 AM  [#]  
Blogger Cat says:
This post has been removed by the author.
1/29/2007 05:40:00 PM  [#]  
Blogger Cat says:
OK, If I'm going to be completely honest here, I do have an airplane engine nerdation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/97643342@N00/373851918/

That was when I was training all the Six-Sigma black-belts at (A Major Airline), before 9/11 when I could walk around their hangers and look at the aircraft being repaired and maintained without supervision. This was a 747 engine about to undergo an accelerated life test.

King's X.
1/29/2007 05:42:00 PM  [#]  

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