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December 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. 2003 CTMA Symposium Update The 2003 CTMA Working Symposium, April 1-3 in Salt Lake City is "Confronting the 21st Century Depot". Co-sponsoring organizations include the DoD Sustainment and Readiness Subpanel (DoD ManTech/RepTech programs), the Joint Technology Exchange Group, and the Joint Council on Aging Aircraft. Confirmed plenary speakers include Vice Admiral Keith W. Lippert, Director of the Defense Logistics Agency who will discuss providing parts support to maintenance activities; Major General Scott Bergren, Commanding Officer of the Air Force Ogden Air Logistics Center, Colonel Robert E. Gerlaugh, Commanding Officer of the Marine Corp Multicommodity Maintenance Center, Barstow, CA, and Dr. James Meng, Executive Director at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Keyport, WA, all of whom will address technical/manufacturing hurdles they face in their depot facilities. We are also pursuing keynote speakers from industry. We expect to have registration starting in early January, and an attendance cap of 300. We welcome the following companies into NCMS membership and their participation in the CTMA program: The Boeing Corporation
The Boeing Company, a global aerospace company, is a leading manufacturer
of commercial airplanes as well as a leader in space technology, defense
aircraft and systems, and communication systems.
General Electric Co. GE is a diversified technology and services company dedicated to creating products that make life better -- from aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, television programming and plastics. Project Opportunities Life Cycle Data Management for Six Sigma Product Quality CAD technology is now capable of creating solid models with granularity and associated intelligence down to the feature level. Corresponding Object-oriented Product Data Management (PDM) systems integrated with CAD systems have been generically designed to add value to the traditional CAD geometry. The key business processes of…
… have historically not been associatively linked to the engineering characteristics or to each other. The linkages today are largely manual. Current life cycle data management processes dictate manual handoffs, delegations, and follow-through, which is a compromise in terms of productivity entitlement and lead to quality oversights. Industry is struggling to demonstrate a successful marriage of CAD engineering definition with the complete manufacturing process data in a PDM environment. Proposed Solution / Approach: Conduct a pilot project in a component manufacturing shop targeting an F414 fan blade. Demonstrate an environment in which maximum associativity, control, error proofing and productivity is achieved through encapsulating the complete manufacturing processes into the current commercially available state-of-the-art tools. Expected Deliverables:
Impact:
Interested Participants should contact Tony Haynes, 734-995-4930
Kinetic Metallization Kinetic Metallization (KM) is capable of depositing fully dense, adherent coatings of a variety of metals on standard metal surfaces without costly surface preparation. Coatings of pure copper, stainless steel, nickel, chromium, aluminum, cobalt, titanium, niobium, and other metals, as well as alloys based on these metals are possible on such surfaces as steel, aluminum, titanium, copper, brass, etc. Additionally, braze powders (e.g., silver, copper, aluminum or nickel-based) can be sprayed out onto parts to be joined and coatings have also been demonstrated on ceramic substrates. The feedstock material for KM is powder. The cost of KM is comparable to competitive processes. Applications include the preparing of corrosion and/or wear-resistant surfaces for parts, machinery and equipment. Decorative coatings are also deliverable. Since the powders are deposited at well below their respective melting points, the coatings exhibit very fine grain size and one can avoid heat distortion of the workpiece being coated and interdiffusion of multi-layer coatings. Spray forming of such metals as pure aluminum and Al-SiC composite has also been successfully carried out with fine microstructure in the final material. One successful application has been the spraying of aluminum grounding strips on steel telecommunications equipment racks made by Hendry Telephone Products. The Australian Navy recently tested a KM-sprayed aluminum coating on a Mg alloy which showed excellent salt-fog corrosion resistance up to 168 hrs. compared to 12 hrs. for a standard chromate coating. Other applications can include replacement of organic plating (e. g., hexa-valent chrome). If you are interested in participating in further evaluating this technology, contact Manish Mehta, 734-995-4938. 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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