Single Sided Slave Fasteners (SSSF) or Single Sided Temporary Fasteners (SSTF) are increasingly replacing more cumbersome and manual tools for temporary doweling and clamping of aerospace components d....
This paper will present the latest development of a configurable and modular steel construction system for use in frameworks of flexible fixtures of the kind called Affordable Reconfigurable Fixtures ....
Variability in composite manufacture and the limitations in positional accuracy of common industrial robots have hampered automation of assembly tasks within aircraft manufacturing. One way to handle ....
Building prototype aircrafts is costly in tooling especially since only one aircraft is being built. Today's most common tooling strategy is to weld together a beam framework. Welded framework solutio....
Accurately measuring the length of a pintail type fastener is limited by the process of forming the fastener. When the pintail is formed its overall length is not dimensionally controlled. To accurate....
This paper presents an indoor global positioning system (iGPS) that is capable of measuring components of complex geometry and large dimensions. Multi-object and large dimension measurement is very di....
Based on the characteristics of huge and heavy aircraft blocks merging technology, the application of multi-robot coordination in a merging system for posture alignment is studied. Focusing on the fun....
Historically, assembly of large aerospace structures has always required large, heavy duty, expensive machines designed and built with (and for) high accuracy over the entire work envelope. Such large....
Multi-fastener lap joints are vulnerable to fretting fatigue when they are subjected to repeated loading. In general the fretting fatigue condition leads to degraded properties of metallic structures ....
A new method of removing Ergo-Tech® blind bolts, which utilizes a handheld electrical discharge process, is evaluated. Currently, the most common method of removing blind fasteners involves drilling t....
Boeing has relied upon the 767 ASAT (ASAT1) since 1983 to fasten the chords, stiffeners and rib posts to the web of the four 767 wing spars. The machine was originally commissioned with a Terra five a....
The riveting process with a solid rivet is one of the most applied joining processes in the aeronautic industry. New materials and new design requirements constitute challenges that drive the users to....
The use of two-piece temporary fasteners is not an option on some build methodologies, processes, or techniques because of limited accessibility. To solve this problem the use of Single Side Slave fas....
Manual drilling in carbon fiber and mixed material structures is a labor and cost intensive process. Therefore, the aircraft manufacturers are constantly investigating flexible and cost-effective auto....
Once limited by insufficient accuracy, the off-the-shelf industrial robot has been enhanced via the integration of secondary encoders at the output of each of its axes. This in turn with a solid mecha....
To eliminate the errors occurring in the wing panel assembly process and resulting in the drilling holes out of tolerance, the automated drilling system is designed. The camera and the normality senso....
