True Position Robotics (TPR), a UK-based specialist in automated aerospace drilling and inspection, has joined an international consortium developing a robotic drilling system for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited's (HAL) Tejas Mk1A fighter jet programme in India. The consortium, led by ADD Engineering Components (India) Pvt. Ltd., is building a cell designed to complete each wing hole in under 60 seconds while holding positional accuracy within ±0.30 mm.
The target is one of the more time-consuming steps in Tejas wing assembly. Each wing needs roughly 8,000 drilled and countersunk holes, about 16,000 across a pair, and this phase of the consortium's work covers 3,200 of them. Holes drilled by hand have reportedly taken between 25 and 35 minutes each, turning drilling into a production bottleneck. The automated system has to run without liquid coolant, avoid delaminating the wing's carbon-fiber structure and inspect every hole it produces.
What's new here is that measurement is not treated as a separate downstream step. Engineers who deal with composite aerostructure quality will recognize why that matters: catching an out-of-tolerance countersink or early delamination during the drilling cycle beats finding it after a batch of holes has already been cut.
The cell itself is a six-axis robot mounted on a mobile platform, fitted with a TPR-designed end effector that clamps onto the wing structure, establishes its position and orientation, drills, countersinks, measures the result and checks for defects in one continuous sequence. Vision systems assist with positioning and integrated dust extraction handles composite swarf. Robot-Technology GmbH, the consortium's German partner, supplies industrial robotics and measurement expertise alongside specialist tooling support.
HAL has an order for 83 Tejas Mk1A aircraft from the Indian Air Force, with further demand expected, and the new line is initially sized for about 20 wing sets a year with room to scale. TPR frames the work as "the type of complex, high-precision manufacturing challenge" its drilling and positioning technology was built for. The same platform, the company says, could later be adapted for the Tejas Mk2 and India's in-development Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, extending the consortium's automated approach beyond the current wing programme.
