December 2000

We wish all of you Happy Holidays. Consider a New Year's resolution to become more involved in the CTMA program.

Ongoing Project News:

Trident Refit Facility (Kings Bay)  to Perform Remote Maintenance and Overhaul Using VIS4D

Imagine that you are on land yet repairing a generator alongside an engineer onboard a Trident submarine hundreds of miles away. How is this possible? Through auto-stereoscopic and telepresence technologies provided by the Interactive Visualization project. This project, sponsored by CTMA, involves applying volumetric imaging to real world solutions for true 3D viewing without the need for conventional headgear. The project is delivering the first of three volumetric imaging workstations (called VIS4D) this week, with the Trident Refit Facility (TRF) scheduled to receive its workstation during the 3rd week of January, 2001.

The VIS4D workstation can be configured to display images from any computer platform, monitors, televisions, and video cameras.  TRF will perform remote equipment maintenance and overhaul by placing stereo video cameras onboard a submarine and sending the video over secure channels to the VIS4D system located on land.  There, an engineer can see, in true 3D, what the submariner is seeing and assist in necessary repair.  Needless to say, this method of remote maintenance will save both time and money, and will help reduce unnecessary mission delays.

Project participants DaimlerChrysler and United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) will also apply the VIS4D system to save time and money within their corporations.  The DaimlerChrysler Design Center will use the system to improve efficiencies in its product design process, bringing “art to part” faster.  UTRC intends to use the VIS4D system for distance learning, by delivering college courses in 3D over the Internet. The project team is rounded out with Ethereal Technologies, Opticore, and VE Technologies, who will work together to integrate the hardware and software necessary to perform these three-dimensional tasks.

For further information, contact Chuck Ryan at 734-995-4905.

Embedded Capacitance Technology

Recognizing the value of a collective solution, NCMS, together with more than a dozen partners, organized a collaborative effort aimed at advancing the use of embedded capacitance technology for power supply decoupling. The goal of the Embedded Decoupling Capacitance (EDC) Project was to encourage the development and use of embedded capacitive materials in printed circuit boards. The project team focused on the embedding of a single large (distributed) capacitance within the circuit board. Commercially available materials and developmental materials were evaluated for compatibility with the circuit board manufacturing process, for materials properties, for reliability, and for their ability to perform the decoupling function. The project has thus taken some of the first steps towards the realization of embedded passives in organic substrates.

The EDC Consortium, under the leadership of industry champion Rick Charbonneau from StorageTek and NCMS Program Manager Lee Patch, completed two very successful conferences this year. They were held on February 28-29 in Tempe, Arizona, and August 21 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The conferences provided a forum in which program results were disseminated to a targeted group of industry representatives, including product designers, material suppliers, fabricators, and OEMs. A total of 100 individuals attended, with some 15 from NCMS member companies. Attendees came from 18 states and from Korea, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Members of the project team, including Rick Foley from Tobyhanna Army Depot, presented information and facilitated discussions on the program goals and objectives, test vehicle design, material test results, reliability test results, electrical test results (decoupling and electromagnetic interference), and modeling of the electrical performance of EDC.

Conference proceedings are available for $50.00.

Project Final Report will be available January 2001 for $350.00.

Please contact 
NCMS Customer Care, customercare@ncms.org

Demonstration of Capabilities - High Throughput Production Processing of 5-Axis Aluminum Components

A demonstration of the High Throughput Production Processing of 5-Axis Aluminum Components (HITHRU) project will be held Wednesday, January 17, 2001, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 PM at Cincinnati Machine, 4701 Marburg, Cincinnati, OH .  This demonstration is intended for manufacturing engineers who are interested in major reductions in throughput time for 5-axis parts.  The demonstration will:

• Import a STEP solid model of a 5-axis component into the Cimskil™
  Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) system
• Perform automated and interactive manufacturing feature recognition
• Develop manufacturing plan and organize features
• Perform automated and interactive development of manufacturing methods for the identified features
• Output an APT CL file targeted to a Lancer V5 5-axis vertical machining center
• Run a cutter simulation of the APT file
• Deliver the file to manufacturing
• Make the part

The HITHRU project is focused on the reduction of the process-planning portion of the product realization cycle. Air Logistics Centers (ALC) frequently manufacture replacement parts for military aircraft by machining replacements from aluminum slab stock. Since many of the aircraft are already well beyond their original design life, obtaining original design and manufacturing data for necessary parts can be difficult. This is a particularly vexing problem for the ALCs because they are the source of last resort for the most difficult to make components.

For components where technical data is lacking or non-existent, part design, analysis and process planning dominate the product realization cycle. Improvements here have direct and dramatic impact on throughput.

HITHRU Phase I focused on computer aids for the process planning cycle. The most difficult to make components are those requiring 5-axis machine tools, so Phase I efforts are adding 5-axis feature recognition and process planning rules to the Cimskil software system offered by Technology Answers, Inc. In addition, in Phase I, Cincinnati Machine is performing extensive cutting characterization testing using a typical aerospace tool set and a high-speed spindle. Phase I results are the subject of this demonstration.

HITHRU Phase II is focused on improvements to Cimskil that will enable user extensions to the rule sets for manufacturing methods, machine tool characteristics, and APT CL output customizations for specific controllers.

Contact Tony Haynes (734-995-4930) for further information.

The following ideas are being considered for development into collaborative projects. A complete list of emerging ideas is included at the end of this newsletter.

To express your interest in participating in this project, please contact 
Bill Waddell, 231-264-9774.

Proposed new wastewater regulations for the Metal Products and Machinery (MP&M) category have been issued in draft form by the EPA, and are scheduled to be published in the Federal Register in December, 2000. The regulations will set new and tighter standards for most facilities that process metal in any form. The proposed standards will affect many military maintenance and production activities that discharge process wastewater. Facilities that will have to comply with the new standards include:

• plating shops that are currently regulated under 40 CFR 433
• metal cleaning operations (e.g., pipe shops, steam cleaning)
• painting and depainting operations
• machining operations
• machinery and vehicle testing, overhaul, and repair shops
• many other military maintenance activities that have not been covered by federal categorical standards until now

The new MP&M regulations will be published in final form in December 2002 and affected activities must be in compliance with the new discharge limitations by December 2005. If the rule is finalized in anything like its current form, many military industrial activities will need to upgrade their pollution control systems in order to comply with the new standards. Information on the current status of the MP&M regulations, together with a pre-publication draft of the proposed rule, may be found at the National Metal Finishing Resource Center.

Because the new rules will affect both military and industrial facilities, NCMS is exploring potential partnerships under the CTMA program to assess the impact of the new rules on existing facilities, and to evaluate the technology and operational changes that may be required to comply with the new standards.

To learn more about this project opportunity, contact Paul Chalmer (734-995-4911).

• The NCMS 2001 Conference, being held May 6-8 at the Marriott Resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina, offers a “think tank” forum at which knowledgeable speakers and conference participants can interact to discuss the game changers that will come into play in building our preferred future.  Further information about this event can be found on the NCMS website.
• On Tuesday, May 8, CTMA is sponsoring a forum of program discussions of interest to both our DoD and industry participants.  We are attempting to assemble a workshop agenda that focuses on funded programs from throughout DoD that involve similar themes.  The objective is for participants from each program to describe their efforts. Collectively, we will then use the information to ensure that projects are not overlapping, but are instead working together.  Sample workshop topics include telemaintenance, smart processing, and laser shock peening.  We welcome your suggestions for additional topic areas.

We will be updating the list of new project ideas in January. Ideas that have generated little or no interest will be dropped. Therefore, if you have interest in any of these projects, contact Chuck Ryan at 734-995-4905.

We appreciate your feedback. Please contact Chuck Ryan with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of Defense; the content of the information in this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred.