Fuselage Mini-Riveting System

The inner and outer fuselage tool positioners are designed to be modular, lightweight assemblies. Once attached to the airframe, the system has a horizontal traversing motion range of 60 inches. Datum pins are preinstalled on the airframe to allow the mobile systems to gain initial position information.

Hold-down, drilling, rivet insert, and bucking tools with force transducers, mounted on rails, install components onto the fuselage. The rails are located along the skin and the frame side of the fuselage. For local control, each mobile system features an industrial hardened PC. Each PC, via an Ethernet cable, is tethered to a central PC on a cart. After the receipt of job information from the factory network, the central PC orchestrates the job between the two tandem vehicles.