Man Power and Infrastructure

Helicopter Division employs 1100 highly skilled persons, direct, indirect and officers and is housed in 42000 sq. meters. of factory buildings in which the manufacturing, assembly and other facilities have been established.







Manufacturing Shops

Besides the conventional turning, milling, drilling and grinding machines, Jig Grinding machine is available for manufacturing parts with close tolerances. For manufacturing the various gears and components gear shapers, gear hobbers, gear grinding, broaching and copy milling machines are used. Structural components are welded byoxy-acetylene, argon arc welding and spot welding in the welding shop.





Special machines

NC drilling and boring machines, jig boring machine, CNC lathe and gear grinder are some of the special machines for which a large number of programmes have been developed. In addition Spiral Bevel Gear generator, Hypoid generator and tester and cutter sharpeners supplied by MI s Gleason Gear Machines are extensively used in the manufacture of ALH gears.

Assembly Shops

In the final and structural assemblies, equipping of the helicopter and assemblies and sub-assemblies of components are carried out with aid of jigs. T transmission components are assembled in the transmissions assembly which is provided with all the necessary testing facilities for clearing the components. The blade assembly shop for fabricating main and tail rotor blades is equipped with bonding fixtures and balancing aids. Composite shop is equipped with bonding fixtures and balancing aids. Composite shop is equipped with facilities for lay-up of composites and autoclave for curing fabricated components.


Welding Shop

The welding Shop carries out precision welding of body structures, tail boom, fuel tank, canopy, doors, seats and so on. Tubular structures of thickness 0.8 mm to 3 mm are welded.
Range of jigs & fixtures ensure complete interchange ability. NDT methodology is used to ensure integrity of weld.

Facilities also include:

metallising and 'Rilson spray' for improved corrosion and wear resistance and bonding properties.




Process Shop


In the Process Shop the finishing processes undertaken are: cad-plating, chrome-plating, silver plating, phosphating (bondorite & parcolubrite), surface conversion coating on aluminium (alochrome) & normal anodizing both in sulphuric acid and chromic acid.

The painting scheme undertaken includes the normal DTD-868 process, finishing on glass & painting byanti-collusion paints. Reclamation by nickel plating in nickel sulphate bath gives a very high rate of metal deposition, reducing surface fatigue. The process shop has also facilities for chemical milling of aluminium alloys including taper milling.