United Aircraft’s aircraft plant at Komsomolsk is supporting serial production of the Yakovlev MC-21 by optimising control processes for fuselage panels.
The Komsomolsk facility – which develops the Superjet and SJ-100 twinjets – has been working on processes for 16 panels which were originally manufactured by the Aviastar plant in Ulyanovsk.
This effort is intended to refine control programs for stretching and forming the panels, to meet the necessary quality tolerances – as well as the tight deadlines – for MC-21 serial production.
Development of these programs is a “very complex procedure” says deputy chief technologist Leonid Tolcheev.
“It can take up to three months with subsequent development and adjustment,” he says. “And we needed 16 such programs.”
He says such work is normally “one-off” and carried out “only when mastering new products”, adding that a similar exercise was performed for the Superjet 100.
An agreement has been reached with an engineering firm, identified as ITS, which specialises in developing control programs for presses. The project has had to deal with differences between the equipment used at Aviastar and that used at Komsomolsk.
