Coast Composites LLC, an Ascent Tooling Group company, was awarded a contract by The Boeing Company to manufacture the largest-ever wing skin molds. Ascent will produce a set of lay-up tooling, consisting of four individual molds, to be used at Boeing’s new facility in Everett, Washington, to manufacture the 777X’s composite wing skins.
Coast Composites will manufacture the molds with its modular tool building system, based on the company’s patented laser welding technology and proven on previous wing skin mold builds. Tooling segments will be manufactured of Invar, a specialty steel alloy selected to match the thermal expansion properties of the composite material used for the wing skin. Invar segments small enough to transport on conventional roads will be shipped to Everett then assembled onsite. After welding in Everett, the final wing skin tools will measure over 110 feet long and up to 21 feet wide and weigh approximately 80,000 pounds each.
“As aircraft evolve, our capabilities, designs and processes have advanced to meet new challenges. We developed our innovative modular tool building system to accommodate the ever-increasing size of aircraft tooling,” said Paul Walsh, President and COO of Ascent Tooling Group.
