Shareholders visit Safran’s Gennevilliers plant near Paris

The visit kicked off with a presentation of the Gennevilliers site and its long history. Shareholders then got a close-up look at the unit that produces fan blades for commercial jet engines. Made of a titanium alloy, these blades are forged, stamped and machined. The production of fan blades requires an impressive array of machinery and equipment, including several powerful presses for hot forging, adaptive polishing machines and high-speed 5-axis machining cells to finish the blades.

Shareholders then visited a forging unit, which makes rotating parts, including fan disks, turbine shafts, “blisks” (single-piece integrally-bladed disks) and compressor spools.

Next, they saw the unit that manufactures turbine blades using the lost-wax casting process. These blades are made from a nickel-based alloy including cobalt. The manufacturing process entails making a wax model, then depositing a ceramic material around it to form a shell, which is used as the mold. The metallic alloy is then injected into this mold in liquid form to make the part.

The visit culminated at the assembly, machining and coating unit, which deploys four main processes: grinding, drilling, assembly and coating. All parts made at Gennevilliers are then shipped to the Safran Aircraft Engines plant in Villaroche, also near Paris, to take their place in our engines.

 

Learn more

• Go to the Safran Aircraft Engines web site