Proprietary Parts
Standard Parts
All aircraft have a number of major, common characteristics regardless of whether they are fixed wing or rotary wing, military or commercial. They must have very reliable systems that control the direction of flight and that extend and retract flaps, slats, landing gear, and thrust reversers. Weight is critical in determining the amount of passengers, cargo, and fuel the plane can carry so the aircraft must be made of very strong, but lightweight materials. They operate in a very severe environment of changing pressures, temperature extremes, loading due to turbulence, and air with varying amounts of moisture and salt. These conditions demand special and very costly alloy materials to withstand the corrosion and loads encountered on a routine basis. Because of these very strict and ongoing Engineering and Quality Assurance standards, qualified purchasing sources are limited to a very small, select group of suppliers or, in some cases, to a single source such as The Freeman Company.
During the source selection process, product pricing is given due consideration, but consistently delivered product quality is paramount. On-time delivery is considered important to maintain production line flow. It is for all of these above reasons that major OEM’s choose Freeman.
For nearly 65 years, The Freeman Company has developed an expertise in the manufacture of flight-critical parts, components and assemblies for the Aerospace industry. In the beginning, the company manufactured small-machined standard parts like clevises, pins and threaded rods, and other Government military standard items. These items, although made to customer or government supplied engineering drawings or specifications, are generic in a sense, much like Military Standard (MS) or (Army/Navy Standard) AN nuts and bolts that are widely used throughout the industry for general applications. During the 80’s, the company made a significant investment in capital and company resources to develop the capabilities to become a qualified supplier for the much more complex non-standard items for commercial aircraft applications.
Although the company manufactures several hundred part numbers, the general category of flight-safety items could be defined as:
1. Non-standard Products: control tubes and assemblies, track liners, swaged tubes and various precision machined parts. Metal composition includes: Aluminum, Brass, Alloy Steels, Stainless Steels, Nickel-based Alloys and Titanium.
EXAMPLES
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CONTROL ROD
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TIE ROD
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Tie rods are basic in design and are widely used throughout modern aircraft. They help attach and hold in place; galleys, support storage bins, buttress bulkheads or adjust aircraft skin for optimum shape. In short, they help to hold the airplane together.
Control rods primary use in modern aircraft is in the mechanical linkages between the pilot and the control surfaces that maneuver the aircraft.
Another swaged tube-machine part that is not shown and which is a major product line manufactured by the company is the track liner. The track liner is an integral part of the engine nacelle and serves as the surface in which the mechanical linkage moves during the actuation and retraction of the engine thrust reversers.
2. Standard Products: wire rope shackles, threaded rod ends, rod end clevises, threaded rods, control cable assemblies, clevises and terminal studs.
EXAMPLES
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ROD END
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ALUMINUM CLEVIS
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PRECISION-MACHINED-PARTS
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Precision-machined products at Freeman take many shapes and sizes, but primarily consist of small individual parts that require 3-axis machining to complete them into a finished end item. One of Freeman’s areas of specialty is to start with blank tube stock, form special contours or end configurations and thickness and then perform subsequent machining that results in a very thin-wall product as shown in the upper left. Some of the newer product lines require some limited 4th axis machining work such as the item shown in the upper right picture.