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The Airbus A380 is among the largest aircraft ever built. The wing panels for the Airbus A380 are massive some being as long as 33M and weighing in excess of 4000kg. Large wing skin panels are inherently difficult to handle and the immense size of the A380 makes handling that much more difficult. The crane and wing assembly crews tasked with building these wings in Broughton UK must install and remove these panels multiple times throughout the build process. The task must be preformed accurately, safely, without damage to the wing structure, and within ever-present flow time pressures. The Airbus engineering team of Alan Ferguson, Allan Ellson, and Jim Rowe challenged Electroimpact to deliver a machine and material handling process to automate the installation and removal of wing panels within in the A380 wing assembly jig.

Lightweight and flexible automated drilling machines are becoming more common in aerospace industry to address the increase in demand for low cost assembly solutions. Successful production implementation of the Flex Track system has been accomplished by matching applications with appropriate design features. Following the concept of small lightweight machines, which rely on local accuracy and sacrifice stiffness and shear mass, the Flex Track tackles problems on a detail level. This paper describes how the evolutionary progress of the Flex Track drilling system has and continues to address the increase in demand for low cost automated drilling systems.

The incorporation of split mandrel coldworking into a single- station, automated wing assembly machine advances the technical quality of automated production. Coldworking innovations, including the CMX process and new puller unit development, combined with new clamp-up technology, have eliminated the need for manual dissasembly and deburring, both costly and time consuming procedures. These advances in automation are illustrated in the development of a next-generation automated unit created for wing production of the Airbus A340-600 wide-body program. This paper describes the implementation of new fastener and coldworking technology that led to the development of this automated manufacturing system.

Most new aircraft programs encounter the challenge of balancing the time required for design optimization with product delivery constraints. The high cost and long lead times of traditional tooling makes it difficult for aircraft manufactures to efficiently meet ever-changing market demands. The large size, low relative stiffness and high positional tolerances required for aircraft components drive the requirement for rigid fixed tooling to maintain the precision part relationships over time. Use of today’s advance 3-Dimensional CAD systems coupled with the high accuracy of CNC machines enables the success of the determinate assembly approach for aircraft tooling. This approach provides the aircraft manufacturer significant lead-time reductions while at the same time it supports enhanced system flexibility. Determinate assembly for aircraft tooling has been proven to be high successful for tooling manufacture on large-scale system such as the A380 and A340–600 wing assembly projects.

A custom 5-axis machine tool is constructed to enable fully automated drilling and slave-bolt insertion of composite and metallic wingbox components for a new military transport aircraft. The machine tool can be transported to serve many assembly jigs within the cell. Several features enhance accuracy, capability, and operator safety.