Remember when we had to manually check every single rivet on a panel?

I was working on a 737's wing panel about eight years ago, and the process took a full shift. Now, the hangar I'm at in Tulsa uses a handheld ultrasonic scanner that maps the whole thing in under an hour. The shift came from new FAA rules allowing the tech, plus the price of the scanners dropping. What's the biggest time-saver you've seen come into your shop recently?

2 comments

2 Comments

west.claire3d ago

That scanner still needs a full tech review of the data map. Our shop found it added a step, didn't cut the total job time.

singh.blair3d ago

Agree that extra step kills the efficiency gain. The real time sink is often cleaning up the messy scan data before you can even use it. That prep work can eat up any time the scanning itself saved.