EVERETT, WA—Kuka Aerospace plans to open a new 29,000-square-foot facility here adjacent to Boeing’s assembly plant. The facility will employ 75 people when fully operational.
Automakers are increasingly using hydroformed metal tubing in vehicular structures. Compared with stamped and welded metal parts, hydroformed parts weigh less, cost less, and have a higher stiffness-to-weight ratio.
"The Music Man” takes place in a Midwestern hamlet called River City. The town that it’s based on is Mason City, IA, and the river that flows through it is the Winnebago. If you follow that river a few miles west, you’ll end up in Forest City, which is home to another American classic: Winnebago motor homes.
EVERETT, WA—Boeing may deploy robots on its airplane assembly lines as early as next year. The company has been testing its Fuselage Automated Upright Build technology in secret over the past year and has found success drilling rivet holes on 777 fuselages. Boeing believes the FAUB will improve workplace safety and production speed.
Oakland University is located a few minutes away from Chrysler’s corporate headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI. So, it’s appropriate that the school is home to the Fastening and Joining Research Institute (FAJRI), the only facility of its kind in the world.
Screws aren’t the only fasteners that can be fed to fully or semiautomatic installation tools. Nuts, setscrews and other fasteners—both threaded and unthreaded—can be fed automatically, too.
SHELBY TOWNSHIP, MI—FEC Automation Systems, a supplier of fastening and pressing technology, has opened an office in Chelmsford, England, its first in Europe.
Assemblers in many different industries depend on all sorts of pneumatic, DC electric and battery powered tools for a wide variety of fastening applications. Unfortunately, the devices are also the source of countless ergonomic headaches for manufacturing engineers.