LYNNTECH INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-068

Description

The Army program office, Aviation Ground Support Equipment (AGSE), supplies tooling, personnel, and support for Aviation Shop Sets in Army deployments. These shop sets typically lack climate control, lack trained engineering personnel, and have basic tools required to perform some repairs on Army aircraft. The tools are housed in one-sided tactical shelters, which contain cabinets, worktables, and metal-working equipment to operate on damaged aircraft. One challenge that arises in this workspace is when replacement parts must be shipped from across the world, and take significant time to arrive, or the procurement system is unresponsive. Lynntech proposes the Rapid Additive Production Technology for Optimized Repair (RAPTOR), to support AGSE in their desire to retrofit Aviation Shop Sets with additive manufacturing (AM) equipment. The goal of the project is to develop an additive manufacturing trade study, implementation plan, and supply chain logistics solution. Lynntech will research and evaluate the current state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing, particularly with an emphasis on on metal additive manufacturing processes, in order to suggest equipment for the Army to supply in future versions of shop sets. The target usage of the proposed solution is toward tool repair and replacement, since aircraft part repair is limited by qualification regulations surrounding flight-critical components. Lynntech also proposes to study high-strength polymer and composite printing solutions to reduce cost, footprint, and environmental sensitivity requirements surrounding metal AM machines. Lynntech's initial study summarizes the dominant forms of additive manufacturing techniques on the market today and focuses on three techniques that have features and benefits ideal for the intended application: Bound Metal Deposition, Directed Energy Deposition, and Fused Filament Fabrication. BMD is ideal for printing tool and non-flight critical parts quickly, as long as the applications do not require the full strength of their conventionally manufactured counterparts. DED is best for part repair, since metal powder can be deposited and adhered to an existing part, regardless of starting geometry. FFF is an alternative non-metal print strategy that, when used with high-strength polymers such as PEI or PEEK, or composites such as carbon fiber, can achieve the strength requirements of metal parts at a fraction of the cost. These strategies are studied in detail, and special attention is given to cost, feedstock, consumable resources, training, and maintenance requirements. Preliminary data is provided in the form of a cost breakdown and draft implementation and training plan.