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Wing skin riveting and bolting requires the surface to be flush to +/–.025mm(.001″) to produce an acceptable finish. Using the method described in this paper, automated wing riveting technology and panel assembly techniques can achieve better shave height and countersink accuracies than have previously been possible in production.

The Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) machine layup run time in large scale AFP layup cells consumes approximately 30% of the entire part build time. Consequentially, further reductions to the run time of the AFP machine part programs result in small improvements to the overall cycle time. This document discusses how Electroimpact's integrated system and cell design reduces the overall cycle time by reducing the time spent on non-machine processes.

The A380 aircraft is the largest passenger aircraft ever built and an appropriate machine was required to accomplish the fastening of the wing plank to stringer and buttstrap joints. The lower wing panels are curved along the length and move 1.42m out of plane. All previous E4000 machines had clampup heads that would extend and retract whatever distance was required to contact the wing panel. To improve toolpoint alignment, Electroimpact added a Z-axis that moves the yoke in order to reduce the necessary travel envelope of the clamp table axes and to cause them to clamp in the same plane regardless of panel position along the Z-axis.