Originally posted by Just1MoreDave The news stories this morning about the last 747 made me think about tools like that. There must be acres/hectares of tools, toolboxes, benches etc. that are just a little old or specialized, now idle. And slowly, less people who know what those tools did.
I worked there for eight and a half years, even had a hand in building the last 747 (on a one week loan to do some rework).
Rarely did I have new tools. They keep rebuilding the tools, hand and machine tools. One common drill is a self feeding pneumatic power drill, that also feeds coolant/lubricant through passages in the cutter. The original ones were made by Quackenbush (we called them quacks), a Texas aerospace manufacturing tool supplier. Newer ones are made by SetiTech, a French aerospace manufacturing tool supplier.
Most of the quacks are as old as the factory, having been used on the first 747s in the late 1960s. They have been rebuilt many times over, but Quackenbus has gone out of business, and parts supplies are running low.
The Atlas Copco (and several other brands) drills and other pneumatic tools I used were always rebuilt used units. Once I had a drill lock up on me, and the tool man did give me a brand new one, but out of the hundreds of tools I handled in the years I was there, it was the only new one.
As for tools, you could fill several 747 freighters with tools in the Everett plant alone, and still have enough tools in the factory to build airplanes. Tools rarely sit idle there.
Also, every mechanic that is hired is only chosen based on previous experience, and then after hiring, spends three months at the SPC (skills process center) in school eight hours a day, learning the Boeing standards and processes, and how to use the drawings and specifications to get the work done. In the last year I was there, every time I passed by SPC there was always about 100 new hires going through the training.
That is followed by at least six more months of on the job training, and certification in myriad processes required for performing certain tasks.
And the certifications have to be renewed periodically.
I had about a dozen certifications, and every year on my birthday I would spend a week in the recent lab renewing them.
I see Boeing announced the other day that the space in the Everett factory previously used for 747 manufacturing is going to be tooled up for a fourth 737 line to augment the three lines at the Renton plant.
They have a backlog of over 4,000 orders for the 737 Max, and even producing two and a half planes a day at Renton it will take years to catch up.