Friday, November 12, 2010

Wing Ribs: a hefty serving of work

Here is a photo of a sample of the wing ribs:
I have shown the 2 types on the picture: right ribs and left ribs. On the picture each set is made of a nose rib and a main rib positioned as they will be in the wing.
To put some spice in the building, VANs is not putting the right ribs in the right wing and the left ribs in the left wing. Right and left ribs are mixed in each wing!
As I will have to remove the labels identifying left and right ribs for the alodine treatment, I needed a way to identify them, hence this picture.


There is a total of 28 nose ribs and 28 main ribs. each set (nose,main) has a total of 140 holes including the lightning holes that are visible on the photo. Each and every of these holes need to be debured... for a total of about 4000 holes (3000 of which will receive rivets). Once the deburing is completed and after alodine treatment, each rib will have to be fluted: Why?
Below is the reason:
You see that the darn rib is not flat which means that the holes of the flange will not align with the holes of the skin. The fluting consists in making small creases on the flang (preferably between the holes!) until the rib lies flat on the table. This process is very time consuming.
My guess is that the time spent on the wings is 80% deburring + Fluting and 20% fabricating and assembling.

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