World leading cold rolled technology takes to the skies
The Hadley Group serves the worldwide aircraft maintenance and modification industry as a leading supplier of cold rolled and sheet metal products committed to exceed customers expectations by working together profitably to improve quality and service through investment in people and technology. Our core competencies of Scale, Technology and UltraSteel® are aligned to directly support customers through our in-house expertise and capabilities to the Aerospace, Defence and Security market.
Scale
The Hadley Group has over 41,800m2 (450,000sq.ft) of dedicated manufacturing facilities to provide global customer support. Whether it simply be to manufacture an existing product, or to work collaboratively to create a truely bespoke, innovative product with optimised in-service performance and minimised manufacturing costs for any application.
Technology
Hadley Group is the largest cold rolled section manufacturer in the UK and this is complemented by a growing applied products division which offers a wide range of alternative metal working functions for fast turn around and lower volume manufacture items such as prototypes, including:-
- High Speed Turret Punching;
- Press Braking;
- Stamping;
- Laser cutting;
- In-line laser welding;
Hadley Group Technology is an internal Hadley Group business with the core objective of technically supporting customers through research and development of products. We employ the latest technology from the initial product drawing software, to analyse and optimise product performance in the virtual world - reducing time and cost significantly in the real world - and providing a superior end product.
Virtual analyses typically take the form of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or / and Failure Mode Effect Analsysis(FMEA) to simulate applications for which the products are tested, refined and re-tested. We can test any material provided we have sufficient base material information, but for aerospace applications the most common are:-
- Stainless steel alloys;
- Nickel alloys;
- Titanium;
- Aluminium;
- Nimonics;
UltraSteel®
A development unique to the Hadley Group is the development of our globally patented Ultrasteel® process which work hardens the base material (aluminium, steel's including high strength steel's, etc) to improve performance which means you have two options for the same price.
You can use a lower gauge (thickness) of material and achieve the same performance as heavier gauge products which are lighter and cheaper; or you can have a product which exceeds rival product performance which are the same weight and at no extra cost. As testimony to this the process is licenced across the world in a wide variety of applications and markets and last year over one billion meters (1,000,000,000m) of material was manufactured in 2010.
Since its conception over 20 years ago the process has been continually developed and refined resulting in a robust manufacturing process you can be confident exceeds the performance of plain products. This means the process is used in load bearing structural applications as well as non-load bearing activities due to its improved performance under tensile and compressive load, especially in buckling performance.
