The project
Landing-gear structural fittings are a textbook case for closed-die forging over machining from bar stock: the customer's design specifically called out grain flow following the fitting's load path through the ribbed profile, which only a shaped die impression can produce — a part machined from flat bar stock would cut across that same grain flow at every rib transition, giving up the fatigue-life advantage the design was counting on. The die was engineered with generous fillet radii to avoid folding metal into the ribs during the press stroke, a real forging-defect risk on ribbed closed-die geometry that a simpler shape wouldn't face.
Every fitting in the production run received full UT and MT inspection under third-party witness per the customer’s aerospace quality requirement, with individual heat-lot traceability retained on each part’s certification package.