DAHER-SOCATA is displaying a TBM 850 in a polished aluminium finish at this week’s NBAA convention in Las Vegas, which it says demonstrates its ability to meet unique customer personalisation requests.
Says the company: “To meet this customer personalisation request involved extra work time and research. The consequences of a bare metal finish needed to be investigated by the design office of DAHER-SOCATA Airplane Business Unit and the alclad supplier. Due to limited technical information on this kind of finish, DAHER-SOCATA engineers embarked on a test process to determine the viability of the in-service longevity of this finish. Once this process was complete the standard primer coat had to be removed off the already treated skins that involved over 250 man hours of hand work. This was followed by the application of polishing compounds to bring about a high lustre finish, that subsequently completed by a final polish phase performed by a US specialist in California.”
DAHER-SOCATA says the aircraft is 50kg lighter than a standard TBM 850. Inside the aircraft features a black onyx cabin interior with carbon fibre fittings.
