No More Hand-Scraping Those Wings:

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org

The F-16 mechanics at Ogden Air Logistics Center in Utah no longer have to spend endless hours scraping sealant off fighter wings. Now they have a machine that blasts off the sealant using dry ice pellets, and they say it’s already paid for itself. What used to take four shifts of three to four people to do by hand, now only takes one person over four shifts. The machine cost $27,000, and based on the man-hour savings, it “was almost paid for after the first use,” says Dennis Hathaway, F-16 Wing Shop supervisor.

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org