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August 2002 Welcome to The CTMA Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program. The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and solicit your input. Feel free to submit items for the newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More information about the program can be found at http://ctma.ncms.org/. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to listmanager@ncms.org with "subscribe CTMANewsletter" or "unsubscribe CTMANewsletter" in the subject line. Ongoing Project News New project approved: Air Pollution Control System Improvements The objectives of this project are:
Deliverables will include a:
The DoD participant is the Barstow Marine Corp Multicommodity Maintenance Center (MC3).The project is being demonstrated at Barstow, and will have applicability at a variety of facilities with paint spray operations. The NCMS project manager is Paul Chalmer, 734-995-4911. High Throughput Production Processing of Five Axis Aluminum Components (HITHRU) Showcased “Modern Machine Shop”, in its April 2002 issue highlighted the CTMA HITHRU project with an article entitled “Empowering the Programmer.” The article showed that through automation of a numerically controlled (NC) programmer's repetitive tasks, a 50-80% reduction in overall throughput time could be realized in the NC programming and machining of 5-axis parts. The data featured in the article was developed through this CTMA project by the participants including Technology Answers, Cincinnati Machine, Sikorsky Aircraft, Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems, Cherry Point Naval Air Depot and Warner Robins Air Logistics Center. For a reprint, or further information, contact Tony Haynes, 734-995-4930. We welcome the following companies into NCMS membership and their participation in the CTMA program: Pennsylvania State University, Applied Research Laboratory As a university center of excellence in naval science and technologies, the Applied Research Laboratory provides research and development of innovative materials, process and design technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense and their industrial customers. www.arl.psu.edu Water Weights Inc. Water Weights is a provider of knowledge-based solutions to assist customers to radically improve their ability to manage the full life-cycle costs, performance and safety of plant, equipment and structures. www.waterweights.com
Project Opportunities Cadmium-free Corrosion Coatings Stress corrosion failure of landing gear (LG) components is the leading cause of aircraft mishaps. Cadmium (Cd) electroplating has historically been used to provide corrosion protection to the high strength steel LG parts. Even with Cd, stress corrosion failures occur. Cd is a very toxic metal. Its use generates significant operational costs including hazardous waste disposal, industrial wastewater treatment of Cyanide and concentrated and diluted Cd wastewater streams. Workers handling this metal are placed on the medical surveillance program because Cd is a known human carcinogen. Pres. Bush recently authorized Executive Order (EO) 13148. Included in this EO is the requirement for Federal facilities to reduce Cd and Chrome VI electroplating by 50% of their 2002 baseline by 2006. Advances in coatings that eliminate Cd, and electroplated Chrome VI will have immediate application and benefits in the commercial aircraft industries, particularly as the European Economic Union has targeted Cd for ban. Aluminum has been approved as an alternative coating. However, studies have shown that existing aluminum deposition systems still do not meet the requirement to protect the landing gear from stress corrosion failure. As a result, 243 AF LG parts were recently returned to the Cd plating line. Cametizing is a vacuum-based process that deposits metal and alloy coatings on internal and external metal surfaces for corrosion and wear protection. There are other plasma vapor discharge systems (PVDS) on the commercial market, such as the ion vapor deposition (IVD) system, but none to date, produces the required coating characteristics to protect landing gear from stress corrosion failures, or have the flexibility to produce a multitude of coatings that has been demonstrated with cametizing. The HAFB Pollution Prevention office has already invested about $300K into a proof of concept and a process specific opportunity assessment to validate cametizing as a strong potential alternative for existing PVDS, as well as Cd and Chrome VI electroplating. This project will return 243 parts from the Cd plating line to the Al coating alternative. This project will give the engineer the ability to specify and test new coatings to improve performance in both corrosion protection and wear. The proposed effort will demonstrate the cametizing process for use on aircraft landing gear. Included are pre/post-process part preparation/handling; established coating characteristics to be met, coating test protocol to certify the process produced the required coating; production rate requirements; production unit design; facility requirements to install equipment; occupational safety considerations for the equipment operators, as well as system safety devices to protect the equipment during abnormal process conditions. In addition to eliminating toxic metals, it will also provide cost savings by reducing, or eliminating the sludge disposal cost as well as dramatically reduce industrial waste water treatment plant cost. There are significant in-shop operational savings from material savings, energy savings, worker medical surveillance savings, all that would be realized as cametizing reduces the occurrence of electroplating of Cd and Chrome VI. If you are interested in participating, please contact Gary Burkart, 612-839-4567. APPLICATION OF THREAD FORMING FASTENERS IN NET SHAPED CORED CASTINGS & METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES This project proposes to determine the feasibility to incorporate net-shaped hole features in lightweight materials, using cast aluminum, titanium and magnesium alloys, and metal matrix composites, to establish feasibility for use of thread forming fasteners (TFFs) in various joining applications in automotive and other vehicular, military, and aerospace parts manufacturing. The focus is on evaluating the use of net-shaped hole features in castings, in combination with thread forming fasteners, to thereby reduce manufacturing and quality assurance costs without sacrificing structural or joint integrity. Primary cost reductions would result from elimination of drilling and tapping operations from the manufacturing process. Specifically, the cost opportunity would be derived from (a) eliminating capital investment in the equipment needed for these operations, (b) reducing associated operating and facility costs, (c) reducing product warranty claims owing to contamination from drilling and tapping operations, (d) improving product design flexibility, and (e) elimination of waste generation, cleaning, and removal operations. In this Concept Feasibility phase, an assessment will be done to define the current state and near-term readiness of the industry and technical feasibility through laboratory demonstration in one selected aluminum alloy. Assuming successful completion of this first phase, subsequent phases to generate guidelines for the design, engineering and manufacturing of various lightweight alloys, metal matrix composites, dies, and fasteners suitable for meeting the clamp load requirements of the part applications would be proposed separately. Product and die design considerations and the processes to cast, assemble and service joints incorporating thread forming fasteners in net shaped holes would be developed and the business case confirmed. The final phase would utilize information learned from the earlier phases to verify the new design and process guidelines against current practices and methods (using drilling and tapping) by casting, assembling, and testing parts against current industry and military performance standards. If you are interested in this effort, please contact Connie Philips, 734-995-7051. New Project Ideas (click on topics to see descriptions)
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 this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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