Search Results

Growing use of composite materials in aircraft wing construction requires a new generation of drilling machines. Electroimpact's new LTD drilling machine features a Bolt Injector with improvements for more streamlined operation and less operator intervention. The Bolt Injector “injects” or stages Single Sided Temporary Fasteners (SSTF). It features hands-free automated tool change between three different feed paths for a total of eight different fastener diameters being fed through one set of Bolt Injector hardware. This is accomplished with an indexing system for three feed tubes fed to the machine head, with each feed tube serving more than one diameter. Furthermore the LTD Bolt Injector checks fastener diameter at the machine head and also length in conjunction with Bolt Inserter servo axis. The bolt diameter is checked with an analog sensor attached to a gripping mechanism. The length check is accomplished with a “touch off” pad and the Inserter's servo motor encoder.

Flex Track Drilling systems are being used increasingly in aerospace applications providing low cost, highly efficient automated drilling systems. Certain applications like circumferential splice drilling on large size airplane fuselages require multi spindle flex track systems working in tandem to meet production efficiency requirements. This paper discusses the development of a multi spindle flex track drilling system for a circumferential splice drilling on the 777 airplane. The multi spindle system developed uses a variety of flex track carriages attached to the flexible vacuum tracks to allow for offset or wide inside drilling. Segmented machine programmes allow these multiple machines to be deployed on the same circumferential splice on the airplane providing the multi spindle system. Interfacing of the multiple spindles is achieved by a custom OEM interface using a single screen thereby ensuring simplicity of operation.

Automated collar and nut installation requires complex hardware on the wet side of the spar or wing panel. Wet side automatic tool changers are becoming common but an operator is often required to connect electrical, pneumatic and fastener feed system components. This is unacceptable in a lights-out cell, and any fully automatic solution must be reliable while satisfying demanding design requirements. Figure 1 Wet side anvil for nut installation. The 737 Spar Assembly Line (SAL) is a new lights-out machine cell at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington. The SAL machines are equipped with a unique fully automatic tool changer (ATC). The wet side ATC interface is designed to automatically connect conventional as well as more unique services such as fastener feed. The fastener feed ATC module, called the “spinner,” rotates with the machine’s wet side rotary axis (C axis). It consists of a stack of rotors that rotate inside of a stationary annulus.

Electroimpact has developed an automated solution for installing OSI-Bolts on the HStab for Boeing's 787-9 aircraft. This solution utilizes Electroimpact's existing accurate robotic system together with new hardware designed specifically for OSI-Bolts. In addition to automated drilling and fastener installation, this system performs numerous quality checks to insure the installed fastener meets engineering requirements. Before installing the fastener, the system measures actual stack thickness and the length of the fastener to ensure that the proper grip is installed. Torque and angle feedback are recorded during installation which can be used determine if the fastener was installed correctly. The system will also automatically shave the small protuberance on the fastener head left by the broken off fastener stem, which is inherent to the OSI-Bolt. Figure 1 Cell Overview

An improved aircraft assembly line incorporates fully automated robotic tool change. Ten machine tools, each with two onboard 6-axis robots, drill and fasten airplane structural components. The robots change 100% of the process tooling (drill bits, bolt anvils, hole probes, and nosepieces) to allow seamless transition across the entire range of hole and fastener sizes (3/16″-7/16″). To support required rate, total tool change time (including automatic calibration) is less than 80 seconds. This paper describes the robots and their end effector hardware, reliability testing, and simulations for both mechanical clearance and cycle time estimation.

The automation cycle time of wing assembly can be shortened by the automated installation of single-sided temporary fasteners to provide temporary part clamping and doweling during panel drilling. Feeding these fasteners poses problems due to their complexity in design and overall heavy weight. In the past, Electroimpact has remotely fed these fasteners by blowing them through pneumatic tubing. This technique has resulted in occasional damage to fasteners during delivery and a complex feed system that requires frequent maintenance. Due to these issues, Electroimpact has developed a new fully automated single-sided temporary fastening system for installation of the LISI Clampberry fasteners in wing panels for the C919 wing factory in Yanliang, China. The feed system stores fasteners in gravity-fed cartridges on the end effector near the point of installation.