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| October 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. We welcome the following companies into NCMS: Curtiss-Wright Controls Electronic Systems (www.cwcembedded.com) Curtiss-Wright Controls Electronic Systems provides rugged, integrated solutions that are qualified for military platforms. These solutions typically include system engineering trade studies and application support, with a combination of custom board design and third party COTS content, along with customer provided electronics. Product and service expertise includes: Motion Control, Network Centric Computing, Rate Sensor Assemblies, Vehicle Management Computers, High Speed Data Recording & Rugged Storage, Enclosure/Chassis, Backplanes and Electronic Manufacturing Services. Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Division of Technology Resources and Engineering (R&D) (www.baxter.com) Baxter International Inc., through its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures and markets products that save and sustain the lives of people with hemophilia, immune disorders, infectious diseases, kidney disease, trauma, and other chronic and acute medical conditions. As a global, diversified healthcare company, Baxter applies a unique combination of expertise in medical devices, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology to create products that advance patient care worldwide. University of Massachusetts Lowell (http://www.uml.edu) Educational Institution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts The Marlin Group, LLC Logistics modernization consulting to DoD (primarily USMC) services & agencies. Save the Date: 2011 CTMA Symposium April 4-6 Quantico, VA The Symposium will focus on rapid response to the needs of the warfighter and will include DoD experts on warfighter requirements, depot commanders outlining their current needs, project showcases/presentations, as well as highlighting other DoD-sponsored technology programs. Recently Approved CTMA Project: Robotic Automated Coating Removal System (RACRS) DoD Participants: Navy Fleet Readiness Center East; Warner Robins Air Logistics Center; Corpus Christi Army Depot A new DoD program, the Sustainment Logistics Technology Program, was recently created to enable game-changing technologies to be quickly developed and deployed into the DoD maintenance facilities. The first SLTP project builds off a recently completed CTMA project that developed and deployed an automated rotor blade stripping system (ARBSS) for CH-53 blades. The project was conducted in gated phases that first confirmed the approach on a small scale, designed a full-scale system that was built and tested at NUWC-Keyport, and finally deployed at the Fleet Readiness Center East (FRC-E) in late 2009. The system is currently used in production. The DoD inventory contains:
Virtually all major helicopters and tiltrotors have composite main rotor blades that are also hand-sanded, or at best, impact blasted to remove the paint. In such cases, there is an increased risk of damage to the blade because of the lack of control of the coating removal process. In addition, hazardous waste can be greatly reduced through the use of a laser stripping system, saving an addition $100K per year. Currently, the removal of paint from a V-22 consumes 372 hours of labor, so that this step of the repair process only allows throughput of a single aircraft per month. Depot workload for the V-22 is expected to increase ten-fold over the current maintenance workload. This increase will also mean that FRC-E will need to hire over 100 new workers to handle the coating removal workload. In addition, the current process relies upon manual sanding to remove the coatings. Hand-sanding requires relatively skillful artisans so as to not damage the wire mesh lightning protector just underneath the outer coatings. Proposed SolutionIn order to increase the depot throughput of V-22 aircraft, an automated and less labor intensive system must be developed and deployed. Using the ARBSS system as a base, the overall project will first develop and deploy enhanced ARBSS versions that will be more robust, able to achieve faster stripping rates, and can be easily reconfigured to handle a variety of blades and propellers. The project will then extend the technology in scale to design and deploy a RACRS to a V-22 fuselage with reconfigurability to other similarly sized vertical lift vehicles. In addition to the primary coating removal via the use of lasers, the project will develop reconfigurable robotic systems that would include automated robotic head path planning, sensing, and control to minimize the use of labor in the coating removal process. The RACRS program is currently envisioned in three segments:
The overall RACRS program will produce the following deliverables:
The NCMS Program Manager for RACRS Phase 1 is Chuck Ryan, chuckr@ncms.org, 734-995-4905 DoD Maintenance Symposium and Exhibition: Tampa, Nov. 15-18 http://www.sae.org/events/dod/ Plan to join us at the Maintenance Symposium. In the Great Ideas Competition, three (of six total) CTMA projects are being judged including:
In addition, we plan on being repeat champions for the best large booth competition. This year the NCMS/CTMA booth (#327) will feature four project teams:
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. |
| © 2010 |
