Enlarge / USAF Boeing B-52H Stratofortress take off with retractable undercarriage and rear wing flaps lowered on the Fairford Royal International Air Tattoo RIAT 1998.
Glenn House and his colleagues spent more than four years making a new toilet for the B-1 Lancer. The challenge was not to place the John in the cockpit (it went behind the front seat on the left), but to ensure that every part of life aboard an aircraft that can pull five Gs, break the sound barrier and spend hours in game fluctuating temperatures. The end result did not have to work alone. It had to work without rattling, leaking or revealing itself on enemy radar. Getting well for use on board the bomber was just as complex as making. “Getting a share approved can take years,” says House, the co-founder and president of Walpole, Massachusetts, 2Is Inc.
Until last year, 2Is worked in the military parts industry, which supplied replacement bits for various defense materials. (Pronounced “two eyes”, it sold the parts trade and now focuses on defense-related supply chain software.) Supplying spare parts for the military is a peculiar niche of the economy. Things like airplanes and submarines have been in service for decades and the companies that have made them or have supplied their countless parts often disappear long before their products retire. So when something needs a new button, chair or jar, the army often turns to companies that specialize in making it again.
These outfits must be made from dusty two-dimensional drawings or make lost molds that exactly match the standards of the original parts. They work on very small orders – sometimes for just two or three of a given item – and do not benefit from the economies of scale that make it reasonable to spend five digits on tools. A picky approval process can mean that you have to wait years to recoup an investment. And so, in many cases, they do not bid on these military contracts, but prefer stable, reliable jobs.
That is a problem for the Air Force, whose fleet largely dates from the Cold War. The C-5, B-52 and KC-135 aircraft are 40, 56 and 57 years old on average. The average air force plane is 23 years old. Every quarter, the military department sees 10,000 sub-requests being met, despite the willingness to pay an exorbitant amount to replace bits and bobs that once cost money – try $ 10,000 for toilet seats in a C-17 Globemaster III.
“We need to find better ways to preserve old things,” said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition technology and logistics. And he has one, represented by the piece of plastic the size of a toaster that he keeps in his office. It is a latrine panel for a C-5 Supergalaxy cargo plane. In the past, the Air Force paid $ 8,500 to replace this part. But this only costs $ 300, because it is 3D printed.
Roper says that 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, can produce many of the parts for which the Air Force is desperate, from C-5 gasket handles to F-15 longer pieces. “If I need two or three parts for a B-52,” he says, “I can just transfer it to one of our printers.” Over the past few years, the Air Force has made thousands of parts in this way, and it can work for almost anything made from metal or plastic. Composite and carbon fiber can also work – even printed circuit boards.
Olympic Games for advanced production
But a new approach means new problems. It is still not easy to convert a two-dimensional drawing into something that a 3D printer can understand. The Air Force needs new ways to prove that these parts can handle the rigors of life in the air, that they are just as durable and reliable as the originals. Scientists are investigating new techniques and creating their own metal mixtures to meet their needs. But Roper wants to get their work out of the experimental phase.
That is why he is organizing a new kind of war game: the Air Force Advanced Manufacturing Olympics. The competition, scheduled for July 8-9 in Salt Lake City, aims to make all types of players – additive manufacturing companies, traditional defense contractors, tech startups, universities – compete to solve various problems.
The “open box with floor exercise parts” will ask teams to replicate certain parts without getting the design specifications, while meeting the demanding standards of the Air Force. “Approval sprints” will be about developing new ways to prove that their work is just as good as before. In the “supply chain marathon” teams will wonder how they can get a new part to a certain place, such as Afghanistan. Maybe it’s better to make and ship it in the US, or to keep 3D printing machines on the front line, or something in between. Roper and his team at the newly established Rapid Sustainment Office are still working on the prizes for these events, but those rewards are a combination of money and the opportunity to collaborate with the Air Force or its contractors. Medals are of course 3D printed.
In addition to solving these individual problems, Roper hopes to reconsider how the air force maintains its arsenal. Maintenance and logistics account for 70 percent of the total costs of a platform and every dollar saved here can go to a different program (or back to taxpayers).
When 2Is was founded in 2002, House thought additive manufacturing had a lot of potential. But until a few years ago, technology was not yet ready to produce parts that were accurate and durable enough for military use. “We have withdrawn to the standard production process,” he says. Although he thinks these techniques are a difficult sale for safety-critical components such as struts, engine blades and landing gear, he says he is encouraged to see the Air Force take an aggressive approach to the new technology. And that if he was still in the parts trade, he would make the trip to Salt Lake City and go for the gold.
This story originally appeared on wired.com.
