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November 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. • We welcome the following new member into NCMS: Assembly Guidance Systems, Inc. (www.assemblyguide.com) Assembly Guidance Systems manufactures and supports LASERGUIDE projection systems that project “templates of light” onto large 3D surfaces to identify precise locations for manual processing tasks. The projected images can be driven by a variety of digital data sources including CAD, reverse engineering and other forms of data analysis. LASERGUIDE eliminates the need for part-specific dimensional tooling to show people where to do things. Common applications include guiding the location of composite plies being built up into a laminate, guiding the placement of components in a repair kit, defining where to paint different colors for camouflage and logos and locating weld positions for fixtures.
Congratulations to the CTMA project team "Kinetic Spray" upon winning the 2007 Defense Manufacturing Excellence award (small company category). The award will be presented on December 5 at the annual Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC), and the project joins the ranks of 5 other CTMA projects winning this prestigious award. The project team included:
This CTMA project evaluated several kinetic spray technologies and spray methods for corrosion protection and repair of military and commercial vehicles focusing on: 1. Quantify corrosion protection effectiveness for steel and magnesium parts as compared to paints, thermal sprays and ion-vapor deposition (IVD) coatings 2. Demonstrate reparability for defects in Alcald and magnesium materials 3. Optimize spray deposition efficiencies by investigating substrate and powder conditioning 4. Investigate ultrasonic consolidation as a novel method for densification of difficult-to-spray coatings. The project included an assessment of range of material compatibility, delivery of equipment specifications for implementing a kinetic spray work cell and the characterization of coated samples for assessing the technology. A portable unit was also developed for doing flight line and field operations. The project has resulted in annual cost savings of several hundred thousand dollars for DoD applications.The NCMS contact is Steve Hale, steveh@ncms.org, 734-995-2195. SAVE THE DATES U.S. Marine Corps Regional Workshop February 19 – 21, 2008 Marine Corps Base Quantico As a supplement to the popular CTMA Annual Symposium, NCMS is once again holding a regional workshop designed to bring industry together with DoD maintenance principals to discuss DoD-specific technology needs that pertain to the Marine Corps. The twin objectives for this workshop are to (1) identify new CTMA project ideas and to (2) identify business opportunities outside the CTMA program for industrial participants with the Marine Corps. For military participants, billeting is available on the base and is strongly encouraged.
2008 Annual CTMA Working Symposium April 7 - 10 Baltimore, Maryland
New Project Approval: Automated Process & Inspection Guide (AP&IG) DoD Participants: Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Red River Army Depot, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard In the maintenance of the DoD weapon systems, the inspection process has changed little over the years. Primarily a manual, paper based process, maintenance personnel examine a particular area of a product either manually or with some type of device to determine if a defect occurs and log the findings on paper. This process makes it difficult to standardize the inspection results and the process of performing the inspection. The distributed nature of the process also makes it difficult to provide necessary support material since many of these inspections are performed in disconnected operations with limited access to network resources. Much of the data that is collected is non-standard and poorly shared with the entire organization which limits the organization’s ability to impact change through analysis of the inspection findings. This CTMA project will greatly enhance depot production inspections, quality reporting, discrepancy/failure analysis, and depot throughput. This will be achieved by standardizing and automating selected inspection and discrepancy/failure processes. The project provides immediate value to the DoD by reducing inspection costs and increasing throughput. It provides long term value by providing high quality standardized data that will enable root cause and trend analysis to reduce discrepancy occurrence. DoD sponsorship participation is provided by the USAF KC-135 Tanker program at Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) and the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) program at the Red River Army Depot (RRAD). Annual benefits from this project are expected to be greater than $5 million. The NCMS Contact is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038. Funding Available for Environmental Research and Development The Department of Defense (DoD), through the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), is seeking to fund environmental research and development in the Weapons Systems and Platforms focus area. The objective of these efforts is to identify, develop, and transition the underlying science and environmental technologies that relate directly to defense mission accomplishment through tools and techniques that will permit the DoD to utilize advanced alternative environmentally benign technologies and materials that reduce, control, or eliminate the waste and emissions associated with the manufacturing, maintenance, and use of DoD weapons systems and platforms. SERDP intends to fund multiple projects that respond to the following six focused Statements of Need (SON) in Weapons Systems and Platforms:
Proposals responding to the FY2009 SONs will be selected through a competitive process. PRE-PROPOSALS FROM THE NON-FEDERAL SECTOR ARE DUE BY TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008. PROPOSALS FROM THE FEDERAL SECTOR ARE DUE BY THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2008. Detailed instructions for federal and private sector proposers are available on the SERDP web site at www.serdp.org/funding.
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. |
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