HERSTAL, BELGIUM – Firearm manufacturer FN Herstal recently invested in its own clean-room production line for Surface Mounted Devices to ensure availability for its own weapon systems, and is now offering production of components to third parties.

The production line, located in the main FN Herstal manufacturing facility near Liege, Belgium, has been operating successfully full time for a year. The line, which is lead-free, electrostatic discharge safe, and meets EU health and safety regulations, is capable of small, medium and large production runs. It can deal with high levels of production changes and variability of components, the company said.

Now that the production line is at cruising speed, the company has made it available for third-party customers. Manufacturers in fields such as defense, aerospace, automobile, rail, medical instruments, nuclear, to name just a few, have extremely stringent requirements similar to those for which the production line was set up, and they often also prefer to have a supplier based in Europe, FN Herstal said.

With this production line, and its expertise in Surface Mounted Devices, the company said it can offer a variety of valuable services, including design-to-order of circuit boards, production of small, medium and large quantities of components guaranteed to the highest standards of quality, traceability thanks to serial numbered parts, and fully predictable availability from a European source.