Snecma (Safran) was founded in 1945 and made up of various aircraft engine manufacturers, the individual histories of which go back as far as 1905.
Snecma with GE, through CFM International*, is heavily involved in the development of the best-selling family of CFM56 turbofans for civil engines. In addition, Snecma develops today LEAP, a new family of engines that will power future generation single-aisle airliners: Airbus A320neo, Boeing 737 MAX and Comac C919.
The largest volume is made up by the CFM56: 24,200 units have already been delivered. An aircraft equipped with these engines takes off somewhere in the world every 2.5 seconds.
Snecma is also a partner on GE’s large turbofans, the CF6, GE90 and GP7200. Snecma is addressing the regional aviation segment with the SaM146, developed jointly with Russian counterpart NPO Saturn. Snecma is also aiming at the business aviation market with the new Silvercrest engine. The company also makes world-class military aircraft engines which power 20 different types of military aircraft in 40 countries.
Starrag began to deliver copy milling machines for blade manufacture to Snecma in the 1960s. Today at SNECMA in Evry, there are eight 5-axis machining centres for blisk manufacture (ZT-800, STC 800, STC 1000), with two further STC 800s on order. In addition, there is an HEC 800 for housing manufacture in the factory. Snecma is the largest customer worldwide for the manufacture of blisks.
Machining of titanium blisks requires a strong, very precise and yet dynamic machine – which our machines meet. If the machine stops with the tool still cutting during dressing, the component is very probably irreparably damaged.
In the Vernon factory there is a ZS-500, which is used to produce parts for the main engine of Ariane 5 from difficult to cut materials.
Snecma and Starrag
a succesful team thanks to AMDEC
Success with the customer is not just based on a good relationship at sales level but just as much on good, long-term after-sales service. To meet the high demands of Snecma in relation to production reliability and availability, a joint maintenance concept was developed on a partnership basis in 2012. The French AMDEC maintenance concept (Analyse des modes de défaillance, de leurs effets et de leur criticité) is based on the findings of an FMEA analysis (Failure Mode and Effects). During the analysis, every component of the machine is analysed with regard to the following points:
- How high is the risk of failure?
- How high is the probability of failure?
- What happens if the part fails?
- How long is the repair period?
- etc.
The maintenance concept is supported by pro-active condition-based monitoring. In this analysis, features of the machine are periodically measured and compared with the condition as new. As soon as the trend reveals deviations, it is possible to replace the component before failure. All these measures are aimed at minimising machine failures.
