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.

We welcome the following new member companies into the CTMA program:

Vought Aircraft Industries, Inc. (www.voughtaircraft.com)

Vought Aircraft develops and manufactures integrated aerostructures, specializing in specific major aircraft components.

Dimensional Photonics International, Inc. (http://www.dphotonics.com)

Dimensional Photonics International (DPI) produces industrial three-dimensional measurement systems.

Since their inception, complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices have been susceptible to electrostatic discharge (ESD) events. As electronic device features decrease in size, they become increasingly sensitive to ESD. Identification of ESD related device failures (immediate and latent) needs to be developed so that suspect devices and/or modules can be removed and replaced before the damage impacts system performance in the field. A Static Event Detector (SED) Health Monitoring system has the potential to alert inspectors or equipment operators to an ESD event that may have inflicted catastrophic damage resulting in a degraded weapon systems performance.

Studies by the University of Maryland and others have shown that over 50% of semi-conductor failures are due to ESD. Tobyhanna Army Depot has found $2.53 M of opportunity costs during a facility-wide workflow analysis that may be attributed to static discharge damage. This project will deliver at least three packaged and characterized detectors to the participants for evaluation/characterization at their facilities.

The PLM for Six-Sigma project examines how commercially available software solutions could be deployed and integrated with reengineered business process to better meet the competitive challenges in manufacturing complex, highly-engineered components. Phase I of the PLM for Six-Sigma project addressed major opportunities for improving the way in which product design data is linked to the Quality plan and manufacturing information throughout the supply chain and product lifecycle from initial design to Depot maintenance. The pilot demonstration used a new production part similar to one that currently receives Depot maintenance at OC-ALC. Applying the savings across all new releases and engineering changes for a typical OEM yields benefits on the order of $11–15 million per year, a payback period of six months to one year, and ROI in the 100% to 200% range.

The removal of paint from H53 and H60 main helicopter rotor blades is a labor intensive, expensive and environmentally sensitive operation. Due to operational requirements, NADEP Cherry Point must refurbish on average approximately 150 main rotor blades each month. To refurbish each blade, workers must remove at least the topcoat (paint) from each blade. Because these blades use lightweight fiberglass composite substrates, coatings must be removed manually using air-driven orbital sanders. The process requires an extensive amount of tedious labor in a dusty, uncomfortable environment. Workers complain of repetitive stress injuries and fatigue. Lost time is significant. Since coatings contain toxic chemicals, personnel must wear extensive personal protection equipment to avoid dust inhalation. Conventional paint removal techniques such as chemicals, plastic media blasting or glass (sand) blasting are known to damage the substrate and, therefore, are not viable. In many cases, this media will become contaminated with lead and chromates found in the coatings, thus producing secondary hazardous waste streams that require costly disposal. Hand sanding with air-driven orbital sanders can also cause damage to the substrate resulting in delays due to the additional rework operations required. This manually controlled sanding method is, however, the only coating removal method currently approved for blade refurbishment operations at NADEP Cherry Point.

Several Department of Defense (DoD) technology development projects, including Navy REPTECH/Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Penn State and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) efforts have demonstrated that, in many cases, laser-based coating removal is a viable alternative to conventional depainting techniques. Furthermore, comparative investigations of technology alternatives have shown that laser-based coating removal is the optimum, cost-effective technology for numerous applications. Chemical-based techniques are undesirable due the use of hazardous chemicals and solvents because of costly storage and disposal. Plastic media blasting and pressurized water techniques are undesirable due to the generation of secondary hazardous waste, potential damage to the substrate, and invasion of foreign material into the composite sandwich.

The key differences in this project was the use of solid-state laser technology (more robust) and fiber-optic beam delivery (for better control and ease of implementation).

Testing in the Laser Coating Removal project indicates that performance of the H53 and H60 main rotor blades or any similarly constructed composite material rotor blade is not adversely altered by the use of laser coating removal if used along with appropriate sensors and feedback to prevent substrate damage.

This process is conditionally approved by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). The one condition is the correct and successful completion of the mechanical testing.

Traditional repair techniques for land, sea, and air vehicles in many instances require extensive work involving dismantling of structural components for repair in depot facilities. In many instances, this dismantling procedure is very time consuming and extremely costly. Conventional powder or round wire laser metal deposition repair techniques do not allow for quality in-situ repair of fatigue cracks or corrosion surface damage of large components, especially the components with thin wall structures and when the repair is needed on vertical or overhead surfaces.

There is an urgent need at Department of Defense (DoD) repair depots for equipment with in-situ repair capabilities which would dramatically reduce the time to repair or replace critical components, while reducing recurring repair costs, and significantly improving the U.S. military weapons systems support and readiness.

The team developed, built, and tested for basic functionality a prototype Mobile-PMD^™ system for repair and reclaiming damaged large thin wall engine or large curved surface components. This technology is geared towards larger area repair and portability. The initial tests of Phase-I Mobile-PMD^™ prototype system prove the feasibility of the system of performing the intended repair/reinforcement operations on large components with suitable mechanical and metallurgical characteristics.

A number of technical challenges were overcome during this phase of the project. One of the challenges was to adopt the PMD^™ process to operate on truly 3D surfaces, which are prevalent among large aircraft components.

The engineering team accomplished the design, construction and tests of the robotic articulated arm with repeatability of ± 0.001 as well as the development of an initial graphic user interface (GUI) software necessary for its operation.

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.