French machine tool builder has installed four 40m long tape-laying machines in Japan to began to make the first wing panel for the new 'star' plane of Boeing, the 787 'Dreamliner'. Forest-Line achieves an essential phase of the process in the factory which MHI (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) has just inaugurated in Nagoya to make the carbon wings for the new star plane of Boeing, the 787 'Dreamliner'. One of the four Linear Atlas tape-laying machines began to make the first wing panel, as a test, a few days before the official inauguration of June 2nd, 2006.

The machines reach a nearby length of 40m (130ft) and an inside width of more than 8m (26ft).

They will laminate the upper and lower wing panels, each being a single piece double curvature part, in other words 'not developable' surfaces.

The system, Forest-Line's proprietary, implemented here on a large-scale, confirms from the first tests the validity of the specified options, in terms of productivity, as much as quality and traceability of the totally automated process.

These impressive machines thrust forward their 25 tons of moving mass, up to 60 m/min (200ft/min), thanks to the linear motors on all their axes.

They accept different tape widths of prepreg fibres up to 300mm (12 and#1524;) and are capable of the most complex cuts, issued by the aircraft design department, thus contributing to optimize the weight of the aircraft structure.

The second machine is in final phase of commissioning.

Both following machines No 3 and 4 will be delivered at the end of the year so that the MHI factory can reach full production capacity in 2007.

Having considered the huge selling success of the aircraft, Forest-Line already began to think of a new generation of machines with a significantly increased productivity. Bankruptcy