April 2007

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

Regional JTEG/CTMA Symposium in Collaboration with the Tobyhanna Army Depot

July 24-26

"Building DoD's Continuous Process Improvement Toolbox"

Lackawanna Inn, Scranton, PA

Details to follow.

 

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We welcome the following new member companies into NCMS:

Ahura Scientific, Inc. (www.ahuracorp.com)

Ahura designs and manufactures handheld chemical instrumentation for security defense, industrial and medical applications.

City of Detroit Information Technology Services Dept. (www.ci.detroit.mi.us)

The Mission of the Information Technology Services Department is to provide computing and communications technology strategy, and effective tools and services to anticipate and meet the business and information needs of the City of Detroit.                                 

Electro-Mechanical Associates, Inc. (www.electro-mechanical.net)

Electro-Mechanical provides automotive R&D and test equipment manufacturing.

Results and Next Steps from the 2007 CTMA Symposium in San Antonio, March 26-29

Participant feedback indicated this was the most informative Symposium to date, with special emphasis on the plenary speakers.  Our thanks to:

  • Mr. David Pauling, ADUSD(MP&MR)

  • Mr. John Johns, Deputy Commander, Navy Fleet Readiness Centers

  • Mr. Timothy Dues, Air Force Materiel Command

  • CAPT Jonathan Dowell, Commanding Officer, NUWC Keyport

  • LTGEN (ret) Michael Hough, US Marine Corps

In addition to the plenary and track sessions, the Symposium yielded 37 project ideas that will be considered for the CTMA program.  The project champions will enter their ideas by the end of April 2007, and the CTMA Executive Team will prioritize for 2007 funding.  Ideas must be entered at http://ctmaideas.ncms.org.  Each field in the template must be filled in order for the project to be accepted by the automated system.  Lee Patch (leep@ncms.org, 734-995-4972) or any NCMS staff member can assist you on entering your ideas on the site.  The listing below is the unedited list of the project ideas identified during the Symposium.

  1. Knowledge based advisory system for forgings and stampings
  2. Matching Holes – Aircraft Skin
  3. Aluminum Coating Steel Fastener for Mg. and Aluminum components
  4. Automated Tool Tracking
  5. Business Case Analysis Tool
  6. Capturing maintenance repair knowledge
  7. DoD Certification for Air Filter Cleaning & Testing
  8. Cleaning of Oxygen System Components
  9. Decouple time and temperature criteria as the primary means of managing shelf life
  10. Enhanced Wiring Integrity System Phase II
  11. Expedited material and process change approval process
  12. Extending inspection processes and digital data from mfg
  13. Failure prediction of critical equipment
  14. Replacement Hexavalent Chromium Phase II
  15. HVOF High velocity Oxygen fuel / other corrosion, abrasion resistant coating removal
  16. Infra-Red Cure of Coatings
  17. Magnesium Gearboxes
  18. OEM Tech Publication Collaboration
  19. Overall Equipment Utilization (Machine Utilization)
  20. PLM for Six Sigma Quality Phase III
  21. Portable Airframe Battle Damage Repair
  22. Powder coating of Mg housings and depot components
  23. Remote Gas free monitoring
  24. Sharing data among different PLM systems
  25. Shipping Containers
  26. Small Component Paint Application Modernization
  27. Smart Machine Phase III
  28. Software Development to convert 2D dwgs to 3D models
  29. Sustainment Modeling
  30. Automated Durable Tank Preservation (submarine tanks)
  31. Thermal Drilling Application Development
  32. TM Classification Database
  33. Real-Time Ultrasonic Control of Bolt Tightening
  34. Uniform Aqueous parts washing utilization
  35. Vehicle replacement optimization
  36. Verification of Reverse Engineered 3D Models
  37. Void/delamination detection in composites

Thanks also to our break sponsors during the Symposium:

Solidica, RW Appleton, and Black & Rossi

Call for Project Ideas: DoD Corrosion Policy and Oversight Office

The Corrosion Policy and Oversight ODUSD(AT&L) office at the Pentagon has issued the following schedule for submission of FY 2008 candidate projects:

  • April 22: Project candidates: Project name, short description, and funding estimate
  • June 22: Project Plan submission
  • July 17-19: Project Plan feedback
  • July 25: Project Plan resubmission (as appropriate)
  • August 17: Decision
  • September 14: Project Coordination Signatures

All project ideas must include sponsorship from a DoD facility, and be submitted by that facility.  Project ideas should be submitted to Daniel J. Dunmire (Daniel.Dunmire@osd.mil), Special Assistant, Corrosion Policy and Oversight ODUSD(AT&L),  with information copies to Lew Sloter (Lewis.sloter@osd.mil)  and Larry Lee (lleeva@gmail.com) 

Questions about the program can be addressed to Larry Lee, lleeva@gmail.com, 571-265-5786.

                   

New Project Approval:  Ultrasonic Consolidation of Titanium Alloys for Damage Repair

DoD Participants: Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Activity, Marine Corps Maintenance Center Albany, Army Research Laboratory

Titanium components are used throughout airframe, armament, and propulsion systems by the U.S. military because of their desirable properties. The high specific strength, high toughness, excellent fatigue life and outstanding corrosion resistance of such components results in more efficient and lower life-cycle cost systems. However, when these components fail prematurely, the cost and logistics impact is significant. Not only is it expensive to replace the titanium components due to the material costs and costly complex fabrication operations, but the loss of a subsystem or a system has even greater impact to systems level cost and overall military readiness. For instance, if the removal of a titanium component results in an “aircraft on the ground - AOG” while the part is being replaced (or repaired, if possible) it can result in loss in mission capability and flight readiness. This program proposes a new solution to the direct repair of worn components with an ultimate goal of creating a small, portable field repair tool.

The timely, in situ repair of such components without degrading the parent material properties offers tremendous opportunities for cost and schedule savings for AOGs and other platforms where titanium components are critical to meeting mission requirements. However, a repair method for titanium alloy components must be highly robust since, in many cases, the choice of titanium has been predicated on the fracture critical nature of the application and/or on exposure to severe environments such as hot gases.

Specific repair oriented applications that will be explored in this program include:

  • Feature Restoration (Damage Repair) of metal airframe features: Titanium alloys are used in aircraft construction for their exceptional specific strength and corrosion resistance. This project is a stepping stone towards field repair of cracks in Titanium aircraft structures.
  • Damage Repair of (forged) aircraft structural components. Titanium is used in rotor hubs, landing gears and other dynamic components subject to low and high cycle fatigue.   These components have a need for in field serviceability while keeping materials and manufacturing costs low.
  • Pumps, tubing, heat exchangers, reaction vessels. Titanium is used for its excellent corrosion resistance, yet both field and depot repair is challenging.
  • Armor: High specific strengths realized by using titanium alloys in armor lend themselves to be a better replacement for steels.  Pound for pound, titanium armor affords higher levels of protection than traditional RHA steels.

The NCMS Contact is Mike Gnam, mikeg@ncms.org, 734-995-4971.

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 2007
National Center for Manufacturing Sciences