Leading aircraft manufacturer loyal portable measuring arm user for more than 15 years

Through its engineering design departments, production facilities, the skills of its employees and its product lines, Dassault Aviation offers its customers in-depth know-how, ranging from design to operations, based on strong entrepreneurial values. Dassault Aviation is at the cutting edge of technological innovation and airborne system expertise. The Group aims to provide its customers with innovative and cost-efficient solutions. Through technological development, the concept of the aircraft tends to embody the more realistic idea of complex airborne systems in both civil and military markets.

Few companies in the world are now capable of manufacturing these systems that require essential expertise from the design to the production and support stage in terms of coordination, the accounting management of integrated systems and integration. The systems integrator must possess a wide range of skills to take account of all the system‘s technical and financial components, while at the same time knowing how to assess the risks involved in its integration.

Dassault‘s computer-aided design and manufacturing department, located at the facility at the Bordeaux airport in Merignac, designs and inspects tooling conception, tooling control and retrofitting. This department, under the guidance of Jacky Blasquez, is part of the production department, and is crucially involved in all Dassault‘s projects. Blasquez started as a workshop tool and die maker 32 years ago and has worked his way up as an technical illustrator, consequently heading several departments before assuming the leadership of the design and manufacturing department. „At the beginning, most work was done by hand, later migrating to CADAM and CATIA software for surfacing and tubing drawing. The metrology equipment was rather basic then: theodolites, plummets and rulers. For 3D measurements we had to rely on an external partner. Toward the late eighties our Argenteuil subsidiary had already purchased their first Romer articulated arm, and we used to borrow it from them on a per-need basis. Finally, in 1992 we took delivery of our first Romer articulated arm. It was incorporated directly into the tube bending process, and has been in daily use ever since – for more than 15 years. The second ROMER articulated arm was delivered to the department in 2004, quickly becoming our most critical measurement instrument. . . . .