High rate pulsing wing assembly line

A method for determinant assembly of an aircraft structure comprising:

• loading a front spar with attached mechanical equipment interface fittings (MEs) and a rear spar with attached MEs onto front and rear Multi-Axis Positioning systems (MAPS) of a first assembly position;
• adjusting the MAPS supporting the front spar by appropriate 3-axis positioning to place the front spar in a wing reference frame;
• loading ribs on the front and rear spars;
• attaching the ribs to the front spar;
• adjusting the MAPS supporting the rear spar to align determinant assembly (DA) holes in the ribs and rear spar for proper positioning in the wing reference frame;
• installing fasteners to secure the ribs to the rear spar forming a wing structure;
• at predetermined assembly points, determining, with a planar laser, relative displacement from the wing reference frame of defined measurement points on the wing structure due to flexing of the wing structure and tooling resulting from addition of mass to the wing structure;
• adjusting the MAPS by appropriate 3-axis positioning to bring the measurement points back into wing reference frame position.