ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,654,881, issued on June 16, was assigned to Textron Aviation Inc. (Wichita, Kan.).
"Aircraft skin alignment system with edge indexing" was invented by Royce Heick (Goddard, Kan.), Aaron Paul Shirley (Wichita, Kan.), Clark Ray Miller (Wichita, Kan.), William Richardson (Conway Springs, Kan.) and Jason Short (Wichita, Kan.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An aircraft skin alignment system includes at least one support structure to support one or more aircraft skins and one or more assembly tools; the one or more assembly tools having a holding mechanism to releasably engage with a first aircraft skin; a pulling mechanism to apply a pulling f...