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The Portable Fastener Delivery System or PFDS, has been developed at the Boeing St. Louis facility to streamline the manual fastener installation process. The PFDS delivers various fasteners, on demand, through a delivery tube to an installation tool used by the operator to install the fasteners in an aircraft assembly. This paper describes the PFDS in its current configuration, along with the associated Huck® International (now Alcoa Fastening Systems) installation tooling, as it is being implemented on the F/A-18E/F Nosebarrel Skinning application. As a “portable” system, the PFDS cart can be rolled to any location on the shop floor it might be needed. The system uses a removable storage cassette to cache many sizes and types of fasteners in the moderate quantities that might be required for a particular assembly task. The operator begins the installation sequence by calling for the particular fastener grip length needed using a wireless control pendant.

This paper describes a Robotic Cell, constructed and integrated in the McDonnell Aircraft Robotics Lab, for the purpose of demonstrating “freehand” (unstabilized) drilling and blind fastener installation. The cell operates without the use of hard tooling for end effector stabilization. The cell incorporates a jointed arm robot, a computer controlled drill and countersink end effector, an automatic fastener installation end effector, an automatic head shaving end effector, quick change equipment, and a programmable logic controller. The drill/countersink end effector provides high quality holes and countersinks utilizing a conventional industrial robot without the aid of hard tooling. It can be programmed with multiple feeds and speeds, automatically control chip load and cage force, and has the ability to detect broken bits. The fastener installation end effector employed is capable of installing self locking threaded blind fasteners (blind bolts) of multiple sizes and grip lengths.