Long Line in Long Beach

Abstract

This article discusses various aspects of a riveter and its usage at Boeing. Boeing took delivery of the riveter in 1998 from the German company Brötje Automation and the Spanish company Torres Industries. The riveter puts together the fuselage panels of the U.S. Air Force's C- 17 Globemaster Ill, a giant military transport aircraft {CE: Please check the validity of this edit.}. In four stations, the riveter joins panels to panels, and panels to frames. At the first station, an overhead crane takes an individual panel out of a shipping container, rotates it from a vertical posture to a horizontal one, and then lowers it onto a field of spike-like ‘pogos.’ The pogos extend and retract radially from a bridge, cradling a panel by conforming to its contours like a waiter balancing a tray on the tips of all five fingers. Adding to the already complex matrix of rivet data and locations is the control of every pogo and bridge move for any given panel assembly. With nine pogos per bridge, each with radial and circumferential locations, and five bridges per car, each of which must move along the length of the shuttle for tool clearance, the machine presents a monumental programming task.