波音787梦想客机遭遇维修难题

choi

Christopher Drew and Jad Mouawad, 波音787梦想客机遭遇维修难题. 纽约时报中文网, July 30, 2013
http://cn.nytimes.com/business/20130730/c30plane/

, which is translated from

Christopher Drew and Jad Mouawad, New Challenges for the Fixers of Boeing's 787; The first big test of mending lightweight composite jets. New York Times, July 30, 2013.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the first half, which talks about how to repair the damage (eg a hole) done to composite when only part, not the entirety (such as a panel or a barrel), of it (composite) is to be replaced.  I recommend starting with the paragraph that says, "The use of composite materials started on military jets."
(b) epoxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy
(section 4 application; section 4.3 Industrial tooling and composites)

Click the “epoxide” in the first sentence of the Wiki page, to see the chemical structure of a monomer (epoxy is a POLYmer).
(c) composite material
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_material

View the cartoon only.
(d) “Boeing and its suppliers build the 787’s fuselage out of long strands of carbon fiber coated with an epoxy resin. Resembling black masking tape, the strands are layered around a rotating mold by a computer-controlled robot that looks like a spider spinning a barrel-shaped web. The fuselage is built in several sections at plants in Japan, Italy and the United States, where the deafening sounds of metallic clanging have been replaced by the electrical whir of robots and automated systems.”
(i) masking tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_tape
(ii) For  “a computer-controlled robot that looks like a spider spinning a barrel-shaped web,” please take notice the description is about the robot’s function, not the shape.
* The translation has a top photo that shows an INACTIVE robot, next to which stood a man draping the work (fuselage) at the end of the day perhaps.
* The print (but not the online) version of the English-language report contains about ten additional photos, two of which (one for Boeing and the other for Airbus) shows a similar robot at work.
* The online version of the English-language report does have a video of a robot at work
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/3 ... r-repair-teams.html
, which I tried in vain to find just months ago in Youtube.com.