Peter Miles
07-14-2004, 09:10 PM
If you think that you need a riviter to assemble a wing for your airplane project, this may be of interest to you.
Last week I was doing the thrifty metalshaper's slightly upscale equivalent of dumpster diving. I was driving around behind a number of fabrication companies looking for scrap and salvage steel that might be available. In the midst of a large stack of wooden pallets adjacent to one company I saw some large-size tubing (12"x12" x 0.5" x 20' long for example) and stopped to take a look.
An employee of the company came out and I talked with him for a bit. It turned out that all the nice steel sitting out there was inventory, not scrap.
We talked about what the company's business is. It turns out that they build electromagnetic equipment for riviting, large machines for building entire wing panels for business jet to jumbo jet-sized airplanes, etc. He told me how to get to their high-bay building where they were putting the finishing touches on some machines being sold to Airbus. For the price of one of these machines you could buy a very nice business jet --- new!
http://www.metalmeet.com/photopost/data/3373/99ElectroImpactHiRes.jpg
I took this picture was taken from an open door some distance away from the machine. For scale, you can see a worker in a white shirt on a catwalk or platform on the upper right side. This machine runs back and forth on a 165 meter long production line.
Their website shows some good images of this machine and others that they build.
http://www.electroimpact.com
This gets my vote for largest riviter of the month.
Last week I was doing the thrifty metalshaper's slightly upscale equivalent of dumpster diving. I was driving around behind a number of fabrication companies looking for scrap and salvage steel that might be available. In the midst of a large stack of wooden pallets adjacent to one company I saw some large-size tubing (12"x12" x 0.5" x 20' long for example) and stopped to take a look.
An employee of the company came out and I talked with him for a bit. It turned out that all the nice steel sitting out there was inventory, not scrap.
We talked about what the company's business is. It turns out that they build electromagnetic equipment for riviting, large machines for building entire wing panels for business jet to jumbo jet-sized airplanes, etc. He told me how to get to their high-bay building where they were putting the finishing touches on some machines being sold to Airbus. For the price of one of these machines you could buy a very nice business jet --- new!
http://www.metalmeet.com/photopost/data/3373/99ElectroImpactHiRes.jpg
I took this picture was taken from an open door some distance away from the machine. For scale, you can see a worker in a white shirt on a catwalk or platform on the upper right side. This machine runs back and forth on a 165 meter long production line.
Their website shows some good images of this machine and others that they build.
http://www.electroimpact.com
This gets my vote for largest riviter of the month.