At some point, you’ve probably peered out the window of a 737 and thought Wow. These wings are the only things that stand between me and my maker. Thankfully, the folks at Boeing are determined to keep us aloft more efficiently than ever.
The aerospace giant is beefing up production of its best-selling 737 commercial jet wings by using the Panel Assembly Line (PAL), a 20-foot tall robot that glides on tracks and assembles wing skins with cunning precision. At 60 tons, PAL is the brainchild of Washington-based Electroimpact and replaces a 1960s-era process of clamping, drilling and riveting together wings by hand.
Electroimpact designed PAL to join Boeing’s 45-foot-long wing panels together at twice the previous rate with lasers that follow the panel curvature. According to Boeing, the process increases production rates by 33 percent, cuts defects by 66 percent and injuries by 50 percent.
Now that’s what we call reinventing the assembly line.