Sunday, January 13, 2013

Aileron Ribs

I like the following series of photos because it helps to understand the engineering process. First, you start with a design, in this case a drawing of an aileron rib.


Then you build it, but how? Do you take all of those measurements and put them on each rib? Heavens no. that would take forever, which BTW is a very long time, and we would like to speed things up a bit. So, Leo took the drawing and glued it to a piece of aviation plywood, then cut it out. Much faster, but if he did that for each one it would take a little less than forever


So, he used the first rib as a templete to make the others. Hmm, now you're talking speed. 

 This is rib number two, which looks a lot like rib number one except it doesn't have the paper drawing attached.



Reminds me of the story about rabbits, start with two, then . . . 


 Can you see the differences?



Look careful, see any other differences?

Occasionally the design requires some deviations. As we get farther along on the aileron assembly you will see why these differences are so important.



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