Curtiss-Wright Awarded Laser Peen Contract

Curtiss-Wright Corp. of Roseland, N.J., a manufacturer of products for motion control and flow control applications, announced today that its Metal Treatment segment has been awarded a contract from The Boeing Co. to establish a laser-peen-forming production cell inside Boeing's Frederickson, Wash., facility. The cell is planned to be in production during the second quarter of 2008 and would initially be used for shaping the complex curvatures of some wing sections of the new Boeing 747-8. Curtiss-Wright's laser peening process is based on neodymium glass laser technology originally developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It imparts deep compressive stresses on the surface of metal parts, which can then be used to precisely form metal panels into their desired shape.