Spi Aéro: our historic expertise
dedicated to your Aerospace needs
For over 20 years, Spi Aéro has been specialising in Aerospace surface treatment and industrial painting. We now offer a broader range of services to support you with all your end-of-line operations. Hand us over your parts, either metallic or composite, and we shall deliver a finished product that is treated, tested and compliant, ready to be assembled.
Why choose us? We are flexible and work hand in hand with our other subsidiaries, allowing us agility and responsiveness to better answer your needs.
By entrusting Spi Aéro with your parts, you can be sure your project will be addressed with expertise and a quality level that is officially recognised by Aerospace principals.
Spi Aéro is certified by NADCAP, ISO 9001 and EN 9100.
Our NDT department
For the sake of your parts’ quality and compliance, Spi Aéro is equipped with an NDT workshop – an essential step in Aerospace Manufacturing. Our certified Level 2 inspectors perform Penetrant Testing and Magnetic Testing inspections on your metallic parts so as to detect potential defects and fatigue signs.
Our NDT workshop can also handle your composite parts, in which case our inspectors will perform Ultrasonic Testing inspections to find any sign of delamination or border defects.
Our Shot peening department
Shot peening is the last step that completes our end-of-line portfolio of services. This industrial process aims at increasing your parts’ resistance to fatigue and hence to extend their lifecycle. Spi Aéro is equipped with 2 automatic steel bead Shot peening machines and one automatic glass bead Shot peening machine. We provide Shot peening services for both metallic and composite parts.
Our Surface treatment department
Surface treatment has been Spi Aéro’s core business for over 20 years, and remains an essential step within the Aerospace chain of production. With much dexterity, experience and expertise, our team ensures your parts’ protection at the highest quality level. We can treat metals and industrial alloys such as aluminium, steel, stainless steel, titanium or even magnesium, for parts up to 3 metres.
We have implemented numerous Reach solutions to better respect the environment. Our semi-automatic surface treatment lines are built internally by our subsidiary Ertech Industries. This allows us flexibility and responsiveness to work on complex parts.
Our Industrial Painting department
Your part’s protection cycle ends with industrial painting. Spi Aéro is comprised of no less than 25 qualified painters who are trained to apply paint manually. Thanks to their experience and the precision of their movements, they are able to control the aspect and the thickness of the paint they are applying. We work with several types of paints (liquid, conductive, water-based, finishing varnish) and special coatings (bonded coating, mastic…).
Spi Aéro also hosts a workshop dedicated to composite materials. We can paint your composite parts up to 5 metres.
Our Assembly department
As soon as we receive your parts, our workshop takes them over and handles the manufacturing, assembly and re-machining processes. Our team specialises in assembling rings, spherical joints, rivets and inserts. We can perform various types of assembly. Rings are fixed by heat difference with liquid nitrogen; Spi Aéro can also crimp spherical joints and perform araldite gluing. Once assembled, parts are calibrated in an air-conditioned workshop to test bores and bushes.
Spi Aéro also offers manufacturing and assembly services for composite materials. We are equipped with two machining centres and two multi-drilling robots and can offer painting and ultrasonic NDT services for your composite parts.
Spi Aéro also in Portugal
Lopitz Group always strives to improve its productivity and performance. To serve this goal, we opened Spi Portuguesa in 2018, Spi Aéro's Portuguese twin. This new facility now allows us to work bigger volumes. Spi Portuguesa’s team also supports Spi Aéro’s when ramp-ups occur. We have two weekly shuttles that ensure a permanent connection between the two sites so that our production cycle remains unchanged.
SPI PortugesaR&D centre :
protecting our environment and our staff
What’s more, Spi Aéro also has an R&D centre comprised of a team of 4, one lab and one semi-industrial pilot line. Their ambition? To improve the surface treatment industry’s environmental and societal impact. This goal is defined in our Spi Aéro Vert 2024 programme and aims at developing new processes that are more respectful of the environment as well as the staff’s health. We have already been able to integrate a revolutionary 2-in-1 process: anaphoresis now replaces surface treatment and painting.
Spi Aéro also works on anticipating the REACH regulation, scheduled for 2024. We have developed public and private partnerships with the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour and the start-up InéoSurf. Together, we work on implementing new surface treatment processes to replace those with chromium 6, to be more mindful of our teams' health and the environment.
Spi Aéro co-registered a patent “for a chromium-free chemical conversion solution”, which is embedded in the EVEREST consortium, supervised by IRTM2P, in order to be accredited for Aerospace use.
