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Aviation History
1975
1975 - 0078.PDF
42 FLIGHT International, 9 January I97S THE US MASS-PRODUCED AEROPLANE the new building, which is remarkably small when one considers the rate of production of 150s—six per day with capacity for ten: The Model 172 assembly line is to follow the 150s to Strother Field and will be housed in another new building alongside the 150 line. The 150 assembly shop is intelligently if traditionally set out. The distances which subassemblies have to travel to reach the growing aircraft are small by virtue of the small size of the building, and the light weight of even such large items as wings enables them to be easily '•" iSS©" fig? / ft'* ' • . ' •' mm]- Sv handled. Compared with the Pawnee plant the Strother installation is light and airy and sparsely manned, yet there is little empty space. Concentrated use of floor area seems to be a characteristic of Cessna thinking, at least in the light-aircraft facilities. The personnel at work on the assembly process have reduced the number of movements in each operation to a minimum, and this refinement together with adaptation of the design to facilitate jigging has made Model 150 construction delightfully simple. The rear fuselage is built from aft forwards. There are no longerons, just inter- costate; a skin can be wrapped round two frames, riveted to the aft one and tacked to the forward frame. The jig element which supported the forward frame is then swung clear and the next frame mounted and another bay of skinning riveted in place. This process continues as far forward as the aft wing-attachment frame. The rear fuselage module is then removed from its jig and located in the centre fuselage assembly jig, where the "scuttle" (the structural module comprising the firewall, skinning 4 jfc' I waf1
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