EVERETT, Wash. -- Boeing has begun installing heavy equipment and robotic machines inside its new 777X composite wing center in this Seattle-area city, and the first engineers have moved into offices that overlook production.
Last week, just 14 months after the groundbreaking, Boeing showed off the proportions of its $1 billion investment.
A cylindrical autoclave -- a pressurized oven for baking the composite wing parts to hardness -- is being cycled through its heating and cooling phases. But even at 120 feet long and 28 feet in diameter, it looks small from a perch at the far end of the building.
On the other side of the wing center, in a "clean room" free of dust and debris and at a tightly controlled temperature and humidity, two big Automated Fiber Placement machines are being tested and calibrated, their robotic heads laying down strips of carbon fiber tape as they zip along.
Layer by layer, these machines, designed and built by engineering firm Electroimpact Inc., build up the 105-foot-long 777X wing spars -- structural beams that form the leading and trailing edges of the wings.
The parts for Electroimpact's corresponding wing skin fiber placement machines are already in the building, but not yet in place.
"We'll start to see this building fill up over the next few months, and as we get into next year we start to move toward early production parts," said Eric Lindblad, the Boeing vice president responsible for the 777X wing, before a grand opening last week.
The facility is the prize Washington state won with its $8.7 billion extension of aerospace-industry tax credits in 2013. It provides the region a new expertise in composites that could be crucial if it's to build future aircraft.
While the 4.3 million-square-foot Everett final-assembly plant next door is the largest building in the world, its interior space is subdivided into six main bays separated by walls.
The 1.2 million-square-foot wing center -- 1,250 feet long, 955 feet wide and 110 feet tall, covering an area equivalent to about 21 football fields -- is divided by a narrow, four-story line of offices and storage into just two vast production spaces uninterrupted by columns.
With much of the space still empty, the grand view from an upper story makes workers prepping the floor for incoming equipment appear Lilliputian.
In addition to the wing skins and spars, the wing center will produce the wing skin stiffening rods called stringers.
And in a manufacturing cell designed and built by Spanish engineering firm MTorres -- which has established a substantial facility in the area to support this work -- the stringers will be bonded to the wing skins before they leave the building.
Large areas of the floor are set aside for incoming machines that will apply vacuum bags to the parts before they go in the autoclave; other machines will trim and drill the hardened parts after they emerge.
When finished, the four big composite pieces of each 777X wing -- upper and lower wing skins with stringers, plus front and rear spars -- will then be sent to the building beside it to be assembled into wings, complete with a ladderlike internal structure of aluminum ribs connecting the front and rear spars.
Full-scale, a 777X wing is 110 feet long, which gives the final airplane a wingspan in flight of 235 feet 5 inches, including wingtips that fold upward after landing so that the jet will fit at the airport gate.
While the fuselage of the 777X will be longer than that of the current 777-300ER passenger jet, it's otherwise similar and will be made from aluminum. The major difference in the 777X structure is the composite wings. The current 777 carries 365 passengers. The new 777X will carry 408.
But the two jets will weigh the same and the 777X will be 20 percent more fuel-efficient, Lindblad said.
The first completed 777X will likely roll out in 2018. Lindblad said that, although Boeing aims eventually to reach a 777X production rate equal to the current 777's 100 jets per year, that won't happen by 2020.
He said production of the current model 777 will slow, and the 777X rate will rise until eventually the older version is phased out.
In the meantime, Lindblad said, "we're excited about going through the details of building the first set of parts and putting our first airplane together."
Business on 05/26/2016