The 3Xtrim Aircraft Factory, or Zakłady Lotnicze 3Xtrim Sp.z o.o.in Polish, is an aircraft manufacturer located in the city of Bielsko-Biała, in southern Poland.
The company was established by former SZD sailplane engineer Adam Kurbiel in 1996 under the name Wytwórnia i Naprawa Konstrukcji Lekkich - A. Kurbiel. The company hired many of the out of work aerospace workers who formerly were employed at the sailplane manufacturer. The company name was changed to Zakłady Lotnicze 3Xtrim Sp.z o.o. in November 1999.
3Xtrim has concentrated on the design and production of the 3X55 and 3X47 ultralight aircraft, which first flew in prototype form in 1996.
The company name 3Xtrim is intended to be a double entendre, referring to the aircraft designs being "triple trimmed" (or more exactly “triple-tested”) during the design, prototype and production stages and also that the aircraft are designed for “extreme conditions”. In English the company name is pronounced “Three-Extreme”.
Famous quotes containing the word factory:
“... you can have a couple of seconds to rest in. I mean seconds. You have about two seconds to wait while the blanker is on the felt drawing the moisture out. You can stand and relax those two seconds—three seconds at most. You wish you didn’t have to work in a factory. When it’s all you know what to do, that’s what you do.”
—Grace Clements, U.S. factory worker. As quoted in Working, book 5, by Studs Terkel (1973)