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Recently developed portable tools have proven themselves capable of feeding and installing fasteners automatically. They eliminate the entire manual processes attendant to the selection and manipulation of fasteners. The fasteners are either stored in remote cassettes or in storage built into the tools themselves. The paper will describe the various means of storing and automatically selecting the fasteners. Ergonomic enhancements, that offer reduced physical stress and provide a safer working environment, will be demonstrated. The configuration of two existing configurations, one suitable for Hi-lites© and the other for solid rivet installation, will be described. The details of the actual installation process and the computer interaction available in support of the installation processes will be described, along with the effect of the man/machine system on the flexibility, predictability and cycle time reduction of the process.

Handheld Automation may appear to be a contradiction in terms. It is not. A wide range of assembly methodologies are currently employed in support of aircraft assembly, two very specific approaches predominate. 1 The most popular approach, which accounts for the majority of the fasteners installed in current production aircraft, consists of a manual process. This requires the operator to perform manual operations in each of the many, if not all, of the steps involved in installing fasteners. Steps include fastener selection, sealant application, fastener insertion, fastener deformation, pin extraction, collar application, or torqueing, as the fastener may require. 2 The other end of the spectrum involves total automation where all of the steps are performed by a machine, with little or no manual involvement by the operator, other than supervision. Handheld automation bridges the gap between these extremes.