I seriously LOL'd at that pic. Sometimes I think that's what they were envisioning when they pitched the idea.



During final assembly before you mount engines, you have to hang a load simulating the weight of the engines. We call them pet rocks. I can't remember if they're filled with cement or steel, but these ones on the '47 weigh about 15k lbs each.

 

That's, what, loading at 2 or 3g's?

 

No, that's just the weight of the engine.

GE genx bare engine weighs ~13k lbs according to Wikipedia.

 

Wow! I (obviously) had no idea.

Bad stuff here, pilot didn't make it. You can see after the breakup the engines made their way out of the airplane.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that procedure tests the mounting points rather than the wing roots.
The entire wing carries the engine(s), the root part is for carrying the fuselage.

I have been to Boeing. The word "impressive" does not even begin to describe that place.
Got to see wing stress tests, too.

 

 

edit: It's not a test. They are hung throughout the assembly process. some not so relevant stuff...

They mainly are hung to keep the CG correct. Without the weight of the engines, the plane will tip on it's ***.

Bendy wing is bendy.

 

Duh, I should have thought of that.

 

When in doubt floor it.

 

Because allofthesteering.

 

Never seen this footage. Seems like bloopers maybe?

For some reason it wont let me share just the link without embedding it.


facebook.com/obseydubsit/videos/305002969902593/

 

And yet the post remains cat-less. :(




I still have no idea how people designed these things prior to 3d solid modeling.



And yet there are "rigid" structures running all through it. Fuel tanks, the shafts which drive the flaps and slats, lots of hydraulic lines and actuators... Blows my mind every time I see 'em flapping outside the window.





I worked for a couple of months at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany several years ago. The "groß" indoor drydock facility is large enough to house two fully-assembled cruise ships side by side, plus the staged pieces of a third split into two halves behind the others, plus space for gantry cranes to move above them. The word "big" is woefully inadequate.

I've never been to Boeing, but I have visited the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. Meyer Werft makes that place look like a toolshed.


I remember one morning when I parked at the far end of the yard and took a bike to get to my dock, from a direction I'd never approached. Off in the distance, I saw what I assumed was a dog lying on the ground at the base of one of the large garage doors. As I got closer, I realized that the dog was a full-size box truck, which makes sense, given that I'd previously seen that door from the inside and knew it to be about 50 meters wide and 40 meters tall.




You see those little dots below and to the left of the "Meyer Werft" pin? Those are 40 foot intermodal shipping containers.

 

I just realize that I have access to a much more significant "ban" button than the one here on MT.



This seems... odd. I mean, there is literally a button on a webpage that I can click to fire someone. I'm not really comfortable with this development in workplace management.

 

Oh i'm very comfortable.

 

Hell man i can terminate an entire list of people. I'm in charge of the SQL

 

Joe, this is straight from wikipedia:

The Boeing Everett Factory, in Everett, Washington, is an airplane assembly building owned by Boeing. Located on the northeast corner of Paine Field, it is the largest building in the worldby volume at 13,385,378 m3 (472,370,319 cu ft) and covers 399,480 m2 (98.7 acres). It even has its own micro-climate.[2] This is the factory where the wide-body Boeing 747, 767, 777, and 787 are assembled.



See those little white objects in front of the building? Those are drydocked cruise ships...

Seriously, I have never seen a building with a "horizon" before. You don't see the other side, just an indoor horizon.
And, get this, there are no vertical supports. No columns, nothing.

 

I've been there and toured that building. Had a buddy who was a supervisor in Boeing security. Honestly, when you're inside you don't really realize the scale of it. Sure, you think, "This is a damn big building," but there's so much stuff in there that you can't really see very far. Then, every once in a while, you get a glimpse down a corridor of uninterrupted space and it's just staggering.

 

That's my office. Each segment of that mural is a bay door that opens wide enough to let airplanes out. The furthest bay on the left is 747, then 767, 777, all the way down to 787 on the far right. We call it "The Factory" The near shore in the foreground is Mukilteo, and the far shore in the background is Whidbey island.

When they first built this plant, they had rain inside the building before they got the HVAC sorted out. I average about 6 miles a day walking because everything is so spread out.