Manufacturing system

A manufacturing system for producing airplane structural components, comprising a drilling unit for producing bores in a material assembly made of at least two material plies for the purpose of inserting fastening elements, and comprising a measuring unit for ascertaining at least one geometry parameter for a previously produced bore,

• wherein the measuring unit produces an optical measurement beam for ascertaining a distance between a measuring lance and a measurement point on the respective bore inner surface, said optical measurement beam emerging from the measuring lance via the measuring optical unit and being incident on the measurement point on the respective bore inner surface,
• wherein there is provision for a measurement movement between the measuring lance and material assembly in a measurement cycle and the measuring unit cyclically ascertains distance values to various measurement points at a scanning rate during the measurement movement and ascertains at least one geometry parameter for the respective bore from the distance values;
• wherein the measurement movement is a substantially spiral movement such that the measurement points lie on a substantially spiral measurement curve;
• wherein there is provision for a manufacturing process controller for actuating the components of the manufacturing system and wherein, by actuating the components of the manufacturing system, the manufacturing process controller works through a sequence of drill cycles using the drilling unit and optionally rivet cycles using the riveting unit according to a manufacturing instruction and works through predetermined measurement cycles between predetermined drill cycles and/or rivet cycles according to a measurement instruction;
• wherein a measurement cycle is directed only to some of the material plies or wherein one of the at least two measurement sub-cycles is directed to one material ply of the material assembly and wherein a further measurement sub-cycle of the at least two measurement sub-cycles is directed to a further material ply of the material assembly;
• and
• wherein the measuring lance has sufficient length to penetrate through the previously produced bore so as to measure the thickness of combined material plies through which the bore extends.