July 2006

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 message body.

Save the Date

2007 CTMA SYMPOSIUM

Solutions Round-up

El Tropicano River Walk Hotel

San Antonio, Texas

March 26, - 29, 2007

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We welcome the following new member companies into NCMS:

BiODE, Inc. (www.biode.com) 

BiODE designs and manufactures solid-state instantaneous real-time viscosity sensors and viscosity readers.  The viscosity sensors’ quartz crystal piezoelectric acoustic sensor technology is for both sampled and embedded real-time viscosity (and temperature) measurements for at-line and in-line process control.  BiODE’s solid-state viscometer connects to industry standard acquisition systems and can be hosted on multiple platforms.

Decagon Devices, Inc. (www.decagon.com)

Decagon Devices supplies instrumentation for moisture sensors; thermal properties of solids and liquids; water activity in foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and numerous other industries.  They also supply instrumentation for canopy light sensors; relative humidity and temperature in packaging, and storage areas. 

Smiths Detection - Danbury (www.smithsdetection.com)

Smiths Detection is a manufacturer of chemical detection and identification equipment for emergency services, homeland security and DoD applications.

 

Recently Approved Projects:

Portable/Hand-Held Oil Analysis Device(s)

As part of a condition-based maintenance program (CBM), performing oil changes based upon oil quality helps keep equipment in optimal condition and eliminates waste. Current technology largely involves collecting and shipping samples to centralized laboratories and awaiting results before taking maintenance action. Sometimes subsequent samples are taken before the original samples are analyzed, making the results of the original samples meaningless. Even though field laboratories have been developed for in-theater use, they are costly and cumbersome to transport and sustain. The shipping and delay costs are even higher when offsite laboratories are used for large global regions.

For these reasons, a better solution would be portable, hand-held analytical tools providing a lab-quality assessment suitable for real-time in-field use. The ideal device will give a soldier or mechanic the ability to determine oil quality on a real-time basis before or during a mission without messy and time-consuming sampling. The device would use the quantity of oil available from wiping the dipstick to perform a rapid screening test and immediately report the results in terms of a recommendation to change or keep the oil. Decentralizing oil testing will empower the field personnel to make informed decisions rather than waiting for a laboratory report. Furthermore, it eliminates the logistics trail associated with the shipment of samples.

This project is a series of proof-of-concept tasks to evaluate devices developed to provide quick and accurate measurements of critical properties of fluids under field conditions. These devices will be used by relatively unskilled military personnel to screen equipment on a go/no-go basis according to guidelines established for acceptable ranges of specified components in oils and related fluids. Development of a high quality, simple to operate, on-site hand-held/portable oil assessment device will empower warfighters with the ability to assess oil quality in real-time at the machineries physical location.

The DoD participant is the Joint Oil Analysis Program Technical Support Center (JOAP-TSC) which is chartered by the Air Force Materiel Command, the Army Materiel Command and the Naval Air Systems Command.

NCMS Contact is Lee Patch, leep@ncms.org, 734-995-4972.

 

Automated Test Equipment (ATE) Synthetic Instrumentation

This successful, ongoing CTMA project has been extended for field testing at Kadena AFB on Okinawa.  The benefit/purpose of this activity is to demonstrate the improved maintenance efficiency that the CTMA SI equipment provides for the USAF relative to their existing support systems, which include ESTS. This demonstration will be much like what was conducted at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska where it proved very beneficial. This activity would also provide an additional illustration of the capability of this equipment to support a deployment mission. 

Kadena AFB operates from the largest U.S. installation in the Asia-Pacific region.  The wing defends U.S. and Japanese mutual interests by providing a responsive staging and operational air base with integrated, deployable, forward-based airpower.

NCMS Contact is Lee Patch, leep@ncms.org, 734-995-4972.

Participants needed on New Project Ideas:  Submit and view project ideas at http://ctmaideas.ncms.org.  Add your comments to new project ideas and indicate your interest in helping to define and participate in the project.

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.


Copyright 2006
National Center for Manufacturing Sciences