Job Description

Flextrades offers highly skilled Aviation Structural Assemblers to our Manufacturing clients across the US for 3-5-month contract assignments. We require 5-10 years of recent experience within the Past 2 yrs

Our jobs are Travel Contract assignments and require out-of-state travel. We currently have Aviation Positions Florida

We provide Travel Pay, Hotel, Per diem, and overtime

Structural Assembler

• All Structural Assemblers MUST** **have experience with thin gauge aluminum materials.

• This is tight tolerance work with .005-.008” (five to eight thou) on Solid Fasteners, .003” (three thou) on Hi-LOKs, .003” (three thou) on holes and .005” (five thou) on location. Experience with tight tolerance work is critical.

• No work is performed with electrical components, harnesses, or hydraulic components.

• All areas/products require technicians to perform sealing operations. Sealants include face sealing, encapsulation, and fillet seals.- All assemblers will be required to go through a Sealant Certification onsite with classroom instruction and an in-method/hands on test.

• All technicians will be required to burnish. Tools used include sanders, Scotch Brite, and burnishing wheels as well as brushes.- Burnishing to finishes of 125 (or so).

• All technicians regardless of product/assembly will use a variety of tools.- Tools: countersinks, reamers, rivet guns, 90-degree sanders, pencil grinders, calipers, scales, mics, rubber mallets, punches, and chisels, hand, and pneumatic squeezes, and bucking bars. Some wrenches. Most is hand tighten work.

  • If torquing is required, all torque values are outlined for structural assemblers.

• All areas will require some assemblers to operate overhead cranes – training will be provided. Remote controlled cranes and this is only in certain areas. Training Manager from safety will perform the training.

• ALL assemblers for ALL areas will need to take a Rivet Plate Test which allows VAERO to understand the skill of the technician, if they can follow instruction, if they can drill a hole, and if they can install fasteners.- This will require all assemblers to understand edge distance, pitch, scales, hole size, fasteners, etc.

  • This test could take anywhere from 4 hours to one day or so. If they are fluent in sheet metal, this will hold true.

• Need individuals that have worked with tooling fixtures, placing parts on them, knowing how to locate holes on the fixtures.

• The work being performed is done on Sikorsky aircraft specifically Sikorsky cockpits.- This is a structural assembly environment involving multiple cockpit sections being simultaneously built across various work cells and work areas.

  • Assemblies are fixture based and often require coordination between up to 5 mechanics working on the same unit at once.

  • Responsible for locating and installing floors, seat tracks, structural panels, and related components.

  • Utilizing specialized tooling, precision alignment methods, and pinned fixture setups to maintain engineering tolerances.

  • Strong blueprint interpretation is needed, attention to detail is needed, and the ability to perform structural drilling, hole prep, fastening, and assembly operations to aerospace standards.

  • Assigned to different sections of the cockpit.

  • 80% of the work is fixtured. Non-fixtured work is generally the last detail needing assembly since it can’t be installed when fixtured.

  • Materials are aluminum and composite, as well as fiberglass.

  • The types of fasteners used are ABS Bolts, Cherry Bolts, Lockbolts, HI-LOKs, and Jo-Bolts.- An entire cockpit once final assembly is complete has close to 50,000 fasteners. Individual structural assemblers could see 3000-4000 fasteners in one assembly depending upon assigned station but in general, there are 500-600 fasteners in one sub-assembly of the final product.

  • Reference materials: Work instructions made of text and pictures are available for assembly operations via PowerPoint. Depending upon the assembly, text is sequential in nature or pictures are sequential in nature. They outline build sequence, hole location, drill sizes, etc. These do not always outline what tool is required for the step or fasteners so the ability to determine the appropriate tool for the task is important.

  • A complete cockpit takes 32 days to build on average. Most assembly stations/cells have 2-6 takt times (about 45-50 hours total).

  • The quality dept./team does inspection requirements.

  • Must have a strong mechanical aptitude, the ability to work in fast-paced production settings, teamwork across multiple trades and cells, the capability to maintain quality and production standards on critical flight hardware.

• NOTE: the preferred candidate is a structural assembler from the aviation industry (no license required) who has experience with new build/new mfg. operations, not repair.

You should be proficient in:

• GD&T
• Advanced Inspection & Gauge Measurement
• Machine Geometry & Alignment
• Machine Setups for Production Runs
• Blueprint Reading

Machines & technologies you'll use:

• Boring Mill
• Jig Grinder