Released on April 16, 2011

Aerocast Inc., Mesa, Ariz., which recently expanded its engineering facilities and purchased a new sand reclaimer for its metalcasting plant, announced it has won a contract to produce two new magnesium parts for Hamilton Sundstrand, Hartford, Conn.

Hamilton Sundstrand will use the two castings to form pressure control housings for integrated drive generators used on the engines of Boeing 737 and Airbus A320/A330 aircraft. Boeing and Airbus use these parts for new aircraft and as replacements for existing aircraft.

Aerocast said in March it had relocated its engineering offices to a 60%-larger facility in response to growth over the past two years. The company said the new facility would include a “quality clinic,” equipped with measuring devices including statistical tools and trained technical staff to evaluate process variations and any non-conforming products, to help reduce its defect rates.

“The overall effect of the quality clinic is to ensure that Aerocast’s customers will continue to receive high quality parts, on time, while driving down our costs, which in turn will improve margins,” said Bob Jamieson, the company’s president.

Also in March, Aerocast acquired and installed a sand reclaimer at its Nogales, Ariz., metalcasting plant. “We expect [the sand reclaimer] will reduce our sand costs by up to 70%,” Jamieson said.

Aerocast’s sand casting facility produces aluminum and magnesium castings primarily for aerospace customers, including Honeywell Aerospace, Sikorsky Aircraft and Shimadzu Precision Instruments.