Bert Caldwell : At Goodrich, every landing is a happy one

A little bit of Goodrich product goes up in smoke during thousands of aircraft landings each day.

It’s not the gray puff that follows the screech of tires meeting tarmac. Goodrich, despite lingering confusion, left the tire business more than a decade ago.Goodrich makes brakes, specifically aircraft brakes. And, with each touchdown, a bit of carbon lining wears away. Stopping 280 tons of airplane traveling at 172 mph as it hits the runway creates a bit of friction.

“That’s the beauty of this business,” says Joel Casebier, director of operations at Goodrich’s West Plains plant. “It’s a very consumable product.”

After more than 1,500 landings — precise numbers are a trade secret — an airplane will be due for new brakes. One assembly contains multiple discs. Those linings may well come from the looms, furnaces and machine shop hidden behind the reflective glass skin that is all passersby on Interstate 90 see. The inside is a little grittier, but just as high-tech.

Goodrich has become a mainstay of Spokane’s growing aerospace industry, which has driven a turnaround in area manufacturing employment. If projections by Boeing Co. and Airbus are anywhere near accurate, the sector should be healthy for a long time.

A 1984 Washington State University graduate in chemical engineering, Casebier has managed the Spokane plant for two years. Previously, he worked for Columbia Lighting and for Boeing Co.

Brake disc manufacturing starts with bands of carbon fiber just six inches wide but containing 320,000 strands. Multiple bands are woven into mats that are laminated into material up to 45 inches wide and three inches thick with the consistency of felt. An ultrasonic knife cuts the mats into donuts.

Casebier says that textile phase of production is very proprietary, and helps set Goodrich discs apart from those of its competitors.

The felt-like pads are then fired in furnaces, creating hardened carbon discs that remain somewhat porous. The next step seems a little like modern-day alchemy.

Out on the furnace floor, the discs are stacked in one of 12 vacuum-sealed ovens heated electrically to temperatures so high the natural gas “cracks” into its carbon and hydrogen components. The carbon then infuses the pores and increasing the density of each disc. But they remain just one-fourth the weight of steel, the other material commonly used in brakes.

The process, monitored 24/7 by computers, takes several weeks. The heated gases that come off the furnaces are shunted to boilers in a separate building. The discs are taken away for machining, installation of some additional parts, and coating. Carbon oxidizes if not sealed.

“We’re building a pretty technical product,” Casebier says.

The finished discs are shipped to Goodrich service centers around the world, or to the Goodrich Aircraft Wheels and Brake plant in Ohio, which makes complete brake assemblies for new aircraft. Pads made in Spokane go on Airbus models 320, 330 and 340, some Boeing 777s, and smaller planes made by Embrair, Cessna and Bombardier. They will also go on the Boeing 787 when that plane launches in 2007, and the next generation 737 when that plane is converted from steel to carbon brakes.

Besides its weight, Casebier says steel tends to warp, and does not stand up to extreme heat as well as carbon.

Other Goodrich plants in Pueblo, Colo., and Santa Fe Springs, Calif., make many of the same discs, as well as discs meant for other aircraft. Competitors include Honeywell and Messier-Bugatti. Aircraft makers and the airlines seldom rely on a single source for brakes, says Casebier, adding that contract bidding is extremely competitive.

The Spokane plant employs about 150, a number that has been relatively constant the last year. The plant is not operating at full capacity because operators are selling off inventory as they adopt leaner manufacturing methods. Still, another furnace is being installed to cope with new orders expected as commercial aircraft traffic increases.

Goodrich expects the business of aircraft landings to take off.