Robotic Defastening

Various Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) processes require removal of aircraft skin fasteners to provide access to components located behind the skin, or to replace damaged pieces of skin. The current defastening process is manual with repair personnel using hand operated power drills; the manual process requires hundreds of thousands of hours spent removing fasteners annually. The manual repair process, that requires highly skilled artisans, is quite tedious/laborious and consequently has many opportunities to cause additional damage during the operation from drill drift or off-center drilling. Removal of rivets and fasteners that use the manual process produce unwanted shavings and debris (FOD) that can be difficult to contain. The process proposed here uses automation to remove fasteners precisely, quickly and captures any debris produced during the process. The automation equipment has imbedded vision to obtain precise fastener locations and to provide a map of fasteners on the skin panel for match drilling of replacement panels. This proposed process will enable the MRO operators to move the scheduled maintenance program to a much more efficient level by reducing the number of flow days in the repair process, reducing the number of events of drill ôdriftöááthat causes damage and reducing operator fatigue.