Back to results
US 5,560,102 AGranted
Panel and fuselage assembly
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorsAntonio C. Micale, David E. Strand
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for manufacturing panels and major airplane fuselage sections, including a reconfigurable fixture that holds panels for routing and drilling by accurate numerically controlled machine tools using original numerical part definition records, utilizing spatial relationships between key features of detail parts or subassemblies as represented by coordination holes drilled into the parts and subassemblies and making the parts and subassemblies intrinsically determinate of the dimensions and contour of the assembly.
Claims5
A method of accurately manufacturing a panel, comprising:
- positioning a sheet on a fixture and holding said sheet immobile on said fixture;
- drilling coordination holes in said sheet at locations that will match with corresponding coordination holes in other parts, so that said parts will be accurately located when said coordination holes in said parts and said sheet are aligned;
- routing peripheral edge portions of said sheet while still on said fixture, to accurately locate said peripheral edge portions relative to said holes in said sheet;
- said drilling and routing being done using drilling and routing end effectors carried by a precision computer controlled robot that is directed to the drilling locations and the routing surfaces using a digital dataset taken directly from digital engineering part definition records which include both sheet data and parts data.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.