A party of eleven visited Dowty Propellers, now part of GE on Tuesday 17 June for a two-hour tour of their new facility, Dowty propellers had been situated on the Staverton airfield site for many years but on the 5 February 2015 a fire virtually destroyed the whole building, GE decided to build a new facility at Brockworth. The new facility was very impressive with all state of the art composite carbon fibre cutting, lay-up and autoclave equipment, one of the machines destroyed in the fire was a cylindrical carbon and glass fibre weaving machine this has been replaced with two modern day equivalent machines using the same principal manufacturing techniques for which Dowty are famous. The visit was so engaging that we ran out of time and are to arrange a second visit to visit their repair and overhaul facility, which is located in the same building.
The visit was arranged by Graham Howell and our thanks to him for an excellent well organised visit, all who attended are looking forward to the second visit.
