The CTMA Connector

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 listserv@listserv.ncms.org with "subscribe CTMANewsletter" or "unsubscribe CTMANewsletter" in the subject line.

You are cordially invited to the Joint NCMS-AMT Manufacturing Technology Forum, July 26-27 in Ann Arbor

No one firm or industry has all the answers. Learn from cross-industry experts as they showcase game changing technologies and processes which are transforming their companies. Learn how your company can benefit from technologies developed in other industries.

Speakers from Boeing Corporation, Caterpillar, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Medtronic, Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, Center for Automotive Research, and others will discuss technologies that have made their companies leaders in their industries.

Recently Approved Project: Heat Transfer Classification for Production Tooling

Composite repairs are increasingly being performed within the DoD on a wide variety of weapon systems. The manufacture and repair of composites materials typically follows procedures developed over 25 years ago, and rely upon a temperature and time regime that is designed to produce acceptable, but not optimal, structures. Improvements in computer power and sensors now enables higher quality composite manufacturing and greatly reducing scrap.

Inefficient management of heat transfer during composite production costs the DoD millions of dollars each year in scrapped parts, lost time, delays in returning weapons systems to service and lost opportunity to improve performance and reduce production costs.

This project will develop and test tools to manage heat transfer for ovens and autoclaves used in composite production and repair. These tools will help to optimize the manufacture and repair process, reducing scrap and increasing rates of readiness.

The DoD participants include Ogden Air Logistics Center, Corpus Christi Army Depot and Air Force Advanced Composites Office. Industry participants include AvPro, Vought, and Adam Aircraft.

The NCMS contact is Chuck Ryan, (734) 995-4905, chuckr@ncms.org

Problem: Project focus is on the machining and repair of turbine engine components. From the perspective of a customer drilling a laser hole in titanium, there is need for greater consistency in laser drilled holes and a better process for removing recast material out of the hole without reducing hole creation cycle time.

Solution: Conceptually, devise a machine that has two end effectors that provide two capabilities: laser drilling and waterjet hole cleaning.

Benefits: From the perspective of the application process engineer, setup times and capital costs are significantly reduced (by one half or more) when drilling and cleaning are combined into one machine. There is one machine, one controller, one setup and the capital, programming and operating costs are reduced significantly. From the perspective of reliability and war fighter readiness, precise control helps ensure the blade’s aerodynamics and increases the probability of survival in thermal and mechanical high stress environment.

Potential DoD Participants: Ogden Air Logistics Center, Cherry Point Naval Air Depot, Corpus Christi Army Depot.

Problem: Turbine engine vane and blade components don’t meet lifecycle requirements

Potential DoD Participants: Ogden Air Logistics Center, Oklahoma Air Logistics Center, Cherry Point Naval Air Depot, Corpus Christi Army Depot, Sandia Laboratory

Participants needed on New Project Ideas (click on topics to see descriptions), if you are interested, contact the project manager listed.

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.