Brief Description: Finished riveting rear spars, began "fluting" ribs
Started work at 6:15 AM. It gets too hot to work by 11 or 12. Pop riveted the doubler to the rear spar and riveted the wing tip angle to the rear spar--it will hold part of the wing tip.
The next task is "fluting". This does not involve a Pied Piper, or a marching band.
The ribs are pieces of aluminum shaped to maintain the contour of the wings. These ribs will be riveted to the spars, and the thin sheets of aluminum will be riveted to the ribs.
This aircraft has lots of ribs, more than 50 in the wings alone. The ribs are made by a CNC machine. Aluminum sheets are cut and shaped by the machine. The machine is programed to do these tasks automatically.
But in the process of cutting and folding the ribs end up being mildly warped. Bundling the ribs into tight shippable packages may also ad to the less than satisfactory shape. My job for today and the foreseeable future is to straighten the ribs so that they will line up with the spars and skins.
Image # 1 shows stacks of about 50 ribs.
Image # 2 shows nose (front part) close up of one of the ribs shown in image #1. Note the nose is raised off the workbench.
Image # 3 shows the jaws of fluting plyers. Note the flanges of the rib in Image # 2 with hole that will be filled by rivets in the future. The fluting plyers graps the flange between the rivet holes and a crease is made. The crease slightly shortens the flange. That pulls the worped part closer to the table. After judging the results, the fluting is repeated until the rib will lie flat. It usually takes several minutes to accomplish this.
