An aircraft skin alignment system includes a support structure to support one or more aircraft skins, a puller tool, and a clamp tool; the puller tool having a base, the base supporting a holding mechanism to releasably engage with a first aircraft skin and a pulling mechanism to apply a pulling force to the first aircraft skin when the first aircraft skin is engaged with the holding mechanism; and the clamp tool having a body supporting an edge locator; the puller tool is to pull the first aircraft skin such that a first edge of the aircraft skin abuts the edge locator, the edge locator preventing the first edge from being pulled past the edge locator; and tool holes can be drilled into the first aircraft skin such that the tool holes are aligned based on an edge index due to a position of the edge locator.
Aircraft Skin Alignment System and Method with Edge Indexing
2024-07-18
Patent
Electronic Resource
English