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| February 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. Maj. Gen. Nickolas G. Justice, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command will be headlining the CTMA Symposium Agenda As the Commanding General of RDECOM, Justice leads a worldwide organization of more than 17,000 scientists, engineers and other professionals who keep the Army on the cutting edge of technology through the operation of subordinate research and development centers and laboratories. His joint service experience includes a two year assignment at the Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force as Chief, Project Management for Command and Control Systems. During this assignment, he participated in Operation Desert Storm, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he served as Commander of the Information Management Task Force in Kuwait and Iraq. REGISTER NOW: 2010 CTMA Symposium “Achieve Technology Collaboration”, March 22-24, 2010. https://www.ncms.org/SSL/Symposium2010/registration.htm The 11th Annual CTMA Working Symposium will be held 22-24 March at Quantico. With the theme, Requirements Driven Technology Insertion, 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. In addition to Maj. Gen. Justice, officials from each of the services will discuss their maintenance technology requirements and their approach to new technologies. In addition, project reviews for CTMA projects as well as projects from selected other DoD-sponsored programs will highlight new technologies targeted for implementation in the maintenance community. The NCMS contact is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038. We would like to also thank the following companies for their sponsorship of the networking breaks during the Symposium: 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. Registration for this NCMS networking event is at https://www.ncms.org/SSL/2010FRCeast/registration.htm. The NCMS coordinator for the Showcase is Debbie Lilu, debral@ncms.org, 734-995-7038. Recent Project Completions: Optical Generation of 3D Models for Computer-Aided Manufacturing (OptiCAM) With weapons systems held in service well beyond their originally intended lifetime, parts fail or wear to the point of rendering the system mission incapable. Depots often find themselves needing to make replacements. All too often the technical data for a needed part is either missing or incomplete. For those cases, the depot must reverse engineer the part, constructing a Technical Data Package (TDP) sufficient to manufacture the part. This project achieved three goals: Goal 1 Portable, rugged and low cost but accurate scanner. Spatial Integrated Systems (SIS), Inc.s VZX scanner uses high-resolution digital video imaging with a parallax algorithm for calculating range. Goal 2 Easy transformation of Cloud of Points to 3D solid model. There were two aspects to this goal with the first being transformation from raw range data points to a 3D surface model and from there to a 3D solid model. Producing a full 3D scan requires capturing data from at least six views. Most systems require the use of stick-on targets and human intervention for accurate alignment (registration) of the views, but OptiCAM detects part features (edges, corners, etc.) and uses that information to perform registration without human intervention in most cases. Imageware software converts the registered cloud of points to a surface model. The surface model can be delivered as is to a variety of solid free form manufacturing machines to make a prototype part for function and fit tests. An experienced 3D modeler can relatively quickly transform the surface model to a solid by selecting features and joining them. Goal 3 Development of a complete Reverse Engineering environment. As a result of this project, participant SIS, Inc. has launched a reverse engineering service accessible via the Internet at http://www.nc-aa.com/sites/osandbox/default.aspx. The site is a portal supporting secure file management and access to web services. Siemens PLM Softwares Teamcenter provides the portal software. In addition, all participating depots are to receive at their option a full suite of the Teamcenter software used by the project. Surface models can now be quickly generated with 0.005″ accuracy for parts sized 20″x10″x13″ or less and will soon produce $500,000 annual savings to DoD in performing reverse engineering. The NCMS contact is Tony Haynes, tonyh@ncms.org, 734-995-4930. 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. |
