The Shockform Story…
Sylvain Forgues founded Shockform Aeronautique Inc in 2006, after almost twenty years in the Aerospace industry. His education as a Mechanical Engineer combined with a Master’s Degree in fatigue life improvement prepared him well for a successful career. He worked at Pratt & Whitney Canada, Bombardier Aerospace, Innotech Aviation, and L-3 Communications MAS where he was Sectio
n Chef for the R&D department. His last responsibilities at L-3 MAS were the development of a portable robotic shot peening equipment for the CF-8 fighter aircraft. Sylvain then started his own company dedicated to emerging peening technologies. During the first year, Shockform took the mandate to commercialise the Stressonic Technology for SONATS S.A., a French based company, dedicated to ultrasonic shot peening. After winning a SBIR and submitting an SAE AMEC Specification to support this new technology, Sylvain decided to grow the company by adding more products to Shockform’s product line. Electronic Inc`s (EI) Almen products and Magnavalves were added to the list as well as the InspectViewTM camera, a small boroscope for surface inspection. At the end of this first year, Brigitte Labelle joined the company. Her background in Contracts and Major Subcontracts in the Aerospace industry, including Bell Helicopter as Subcontract Administrator and then as Senior Contract Administrator, then at Innotech Aviation and L-3 Communications MAS was a perfect addition to the company. Sylvain and Brigitte continued the development of their company by adding new products and services dedicated to innovative shot peening. They teamed up with an experienced shot peening equipment builder to offer customized equipment and added 3M products to their consumable lines along with FAA certified shot peening and roto-peening training. In 2020, Brigitte became President and CEO of Shockform and having the majority of the shares, Shockform became a Small Business Woman Owned. In 2007, they recognized the need for pneumatic tools that could continuously monitor and control their rotation speed during the repair of aerospace components. This led the way to the development of the SPEDRON® technology that was used in the FlapSpeed® Controller for flapper peening. The patented FlapSpeed® Controller was a great success among Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facilities, Airlines and OEMs. The US Military was also a great user of the FlapSpeed® Controller, with purchase of both the electric and pneumatic models. In 2012 the FlapSpeed® became FlapSpeed PRO and offered an colour touch-screen, both direction for flapper peening and was smaller and easier to use. Followed, did the Spiker® for Needle Peening engine components without risk of FOD ant the SmartPeen® for controlled manual peening. Shockform is quickly becoming a leader and preferred partner in the development of advanced pneumatic hand tools for the aerospace industry. This specialised market segment offers great potential for growth as companies are faced with the massive retirement of their experienced workforce. Intelligent pneumatic hand tools will complement less experienced workers and provide many benefits:
More quality on expensive components by continuously monitoring and adjusting key parameters of the process
More productivity by proposing the optimal parameters to quickly complete each job
More safety as the tools will remain within safe limits and automatically detect dangerous conditions and shut down. Shockform has a winning combination of innovative products, expertise and vision for the Aerospace industry. It is set to revolutionize how power tools are used by bringing the process into the 21rst century.
