The CTMA Connector January 2010 | National Center for Manufacturing Sciences

January 2010

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.

Plan to Participate: 2010 CTMA Symposium “Sustaining Technology Through the 21st Century… and Beyond”, March 22-24, 2010.

The 11th Annual CTMA Working Symposium will be held 22-24 March at Quantico. The Symposium will include briefs from each of the services on their process for determining maintenance requirements, as well as project briefs from DoD sponsored programs involving sustainment.

The NCMS contact is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038.

Next Technology Showcase: Fleet Readiness Center East (Cherry Point, NC) – New Date: 28-29 April

Our third technology showcase is being held 28-29 April at the Fleet Readiness Center East. This is a chance to bring your technologies to the attention of the managers, engineers, and artisans at the FRC maintenance center. In addition to the open showcase, selected participants will also be able to brief FRC East engineers about their technology in closed meetings.

The NCMS coordinator for the Showcase is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038.

Recent Project Approvals:

Rapid Access to Readiness-Essential (RARE) Parts through Rapid Manufacturing & Repair (RM&R) Technologies DoD Participants: TRF Kings Bay; NUWC Keyport; NFPC Philadelphia; NAVAIR China Lake; Portsmouth Naval Shipyard; Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard; FRC East; FRC Southeast; Anniston Army Depot; Tobyhanna Army Depot; OC-ALC. Rapid Manufacturing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), is a transformational manufacturing paradigm expected to supplant traditional machining and tooling processes for the fabrication of select products. This revolutionary technology builds net shape or near net shape parts layer by layer directly from CAD. Additive technologies allow part design freedoms not possible with traditional fabrication methods. Complex-multiple part configurations can be constructed in a single build, thus allowing reduction in the numbers of component parts needing assembly.

The objectives of the CTMA Rapid Manufacturing & Repair RARE parts program are to:

Introduce DoD organic maintenance activities to the range and capabilities of additive technologies and the benefits that can be derived
Introduce AM technologies as timely solutions to RARE part replacement (legacy parts, obsolete parts, parts no longer available due to diminishing manufacturing resources)
Insert AM capabilities into the DoD organic maintenance base
Facilitate the deployment of AM technologies, which now range from TRL/MRL 8 to 9 depending upon the part to be fabricated, throughout DoD organic maintenance base
Advocate and instigate AM industry advancements and maturation to mature to TRL/MRL 9 to 10 respectively.

The NCMS contact is Connie Philips, conniep@ncms.org, 386-445-2785 . Sense and Respond Logistics: LAV IV DoD Participants: USMC, Light Armored Vehicle Training Company, School of Infantry (West) Camp Pendleton; USMC, PM-LAV; Marine Corps System Command; NSWC Crane; Marine Corps Maintenance Center, Albany This project continues to build off the successes of the first three phases of the project by expanding the scope and deployment within the Marine Corps, particularly:

Examine accurate indicators to induct assets into depot maintenance so that time and money are not wasted on assets that can be repaired more efficiently in the field while ensuring that assets requiring depot level maintenance receive it.
Explore the enormous capabilities that IUID marked items enable. In the Sense and Respond environment that has been developed in previous phases of this project we have built an infrastructure that is uniquely able to capture, use and understand the value of IUID.
Two pilot projects at PMLAV and Distance Support, Crane in RCM analysis and IUID marking of vehicles and components. Benefits of this project include:
Projected savings in cost maintenance of $32M per year in the LAV fleet
Increase in Light Armored Vehicle availability of 5% which is equal to the equivalent of 40 vehicles (LAV Company +) at no additional cost to the Marine Corps. The cost to replace these vehicles would be ~ $60M.
This project will enable maintainers to accurately and efficiently monitor system health, predict equipment failure, diagnose malfunctions, request assistance, and order necessary parts on LAV A2.
The LAV Depot community will benefit by receiving vehicles for rework using condition based induction.
The safety and sensor date collected during this effort can be returned to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to assist with possible platform design improvements.

The principals and hardware developed and proven during this project will transfer easily and economically to other legacy weapon systems, making the benefits reproducible across the Department of Defense. The NCMS contact is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038.

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.