When inspiration strikes at Fleet Readiness Middle East (FRCE), the Fleet Assist Crew’s Superior Know-how and Innovation (ATI) Crew stands prepared to assist translate concepts into actuality. Within the staff’s Innovation Lab, engineers and artisans can discover the varied applied sciences and sources they should think about inventive options to points going through the Fleet and depot.
Now, following a strong funding in gear upgrades, the Innovation Lab boasts expanded capabilities that may deal with extra challenges within the areas of navy aviation upkeep, restore, overhaul and engineering. Greater, quicker gear and the flexibility to 3D print with newer, chemical resistant supplies have resulted in elevated purposes for the lab’s merchandise, stated Randall Lewis, Innovation Lab lead. A brand new laser cutter and improvement of an etching course of for 3D-printed elements add extra potentialities.
“We now have supplies within the lab which are chemical-resistant and in a position to stand up to contact with jet gasoline,” he defined. “Different supplies are electrostatic discharge protected, permitting to be used in electronics purposes. We’re additionally in a position to deal with high-temperature purposes and, with the bigger printers, we will produce bigger elements as nicely.”
With these extra capabilities on-site, the Innovation Lab is ready to produce not solely prototype gadgets, but additionally usable finish gadgets. Being able to make use of 3D printing – also referred to as additive manufacturing – to supply all kinds of things has helped cut back turnaround instances and prices related to creating new and improved instruments, assist gear, parts and extra.
“We’re in a short time shifting from solely with the ability to make engineering prototypes to a actuality the place most of the elements we make are being put into service when a particular software permits, equivalent to assist gear, or as store aids or job aids,” Lewis stated. “Numerous our elements get used within the depot and Fleet environments, and that’s one of many cool issues concerning the Innovation Lab.”
One of many gadgets that discovered its method right into a real-world software, a port cowl for the F402 engine’s digital engine management unit (DECU), helped maintain manufacturing shifting on the engine that gives the ability for the Marine Corps’ AV-8B Harrier.
“There was a backlog of DECUs that the depot couldn’t launch to the Fleet or unique gear producer resulting from a scarcity of port covers,” Lewis stated. “These small aluminum covers had a lead time of over one yr. We had been in a position to 3D print fuel-safe replacements from a chemical-resistant polymer, and the depot was in a position to clear that backlog inside just a few days, at a small fraction of the price of sourcing the unique aluminum covers. We had been in a position to make use of our Innovation Lab capabilities to get parts off the shelf a lot quicker than ready on the availability system.”
One other additive manufacturing resolution seeing real-world use is a drill template set used to assist squadron-level H-60 helicopter maintainers set up a brand new omni-directional antenna mount onto the airframe, which was developed and 3D printed within the Innovation Lab. The antenna mount itself was additionally prototyped at FRCE, then manufactured by an outdoor contractor.
Utilizing 3D printing to develop prototypes somewhat than conventional manufacturing has helped engineers reduce manufacturing instances of this stuff – usually to only hours, in comparison with instances of as much as 60 days or extra when utilizing conventional manufacturing strategies.
“The Innovation Lab was constructed across the actuality that we didn’t have a great way to make quick-turn engineering prototypes,” Lewis stated. “Utilizing the superior applied sciences out there, we’ve been in a position to drastically cut back instances and the fabric prices.”
The Innovation Lab additionally does work supporting 3D printed purposes that may ultimately be despatched to squadrons throughout the Fleet, which is able to then print the ultimate merchandise utilizing their very own 3D printers.
“Numerous our engineers are creating gadgets right here that they know they’ll need the Fleet to print every time they want one,” Lewis stated, explaining that the Innovation Lab conducts the preliminary prototyping and testing, after which the Naval Air Methods Command (NAVAIR) Additive Manufacturing Built-in Product Crew assists with the creation of a technical information bundle. “That information then will get launched to the Marines and Sailors, who’ve the identical printer at their degree that we’ve right here.”
A rubber H-1 helicopter seat boot went by this course of not way back, Lewis stated, and plans for that at the moment are being utilized by Marine squadrons to print the half on-site.
“These seat boots had been exhausting to get, so a Fleet Assist Crew engineer designed one which may very well be 3D printed,” Lewis stated. “Now the Marines are printing them on the squadron degree, and so they’re being put in on H-1 helicopters.”
All the gadgets prototyped and produced by the Innovation Lab bear rigorous overview and testing previous to approval and implementation, however the good points in turnaround time nonetheless make the 3D printing course of quicker and extra environment friendly than may very well be achieved with conventional manufacturing, Lewis famous.
The Innovation Lab is a key element of the ATI Crew, and its expanded capabilities assist assist the staff’s concentrate on creating know-how packages and purposes for FRCE and the broader NAVAIR enterprise.
“The Innovation Lab is a key tenet in our mission to establish, develop, show and assist the qualification, certification and transition of superior know-how options and fashionable industrial capabilities to enhance Fleet Assist Crew and upkeep, restore and overhaul actions,” stated ATI Crew Lead Jamaine Clemmons.
Lewis stated the lab’s continued improvement places the ATI staff’s philosophy into observe.
“We’re discovering purposes the place we’ve a deficiency in know-how, after which we exit, discover a resolution and convey it into the lab,” he added.
In placing this new know-how to work, Lewis and the Innovation Lab staff helped produce about 1,600 elements off their machines in fiscal yr 2021. For a program that didn’t exist two years in the past, Lewis stated, the outcomes have been spectacular.
Whereas the Innovation Lab focuses on 3D printing purposes, it doesn’t focus its efforts on one particular space – somewhat, improvements of all types are welcome, whether or not or not the ultimate product finally ends up as a 3D-printed merchandise.
“With the ability to have an surroundings during which the workforce can think about, innovate and, most significantly, implement inventive options inside their respective areas of duty is the last word objective,” Clemmons stated.
FRCE is North Carolina’s largest upkeep, restore, overhaul and technical providers supplier, with greater than 4,000 civilian, navy and contract staff. Its annual income exceeds $1 billion. The depot supplies service to the fleet whereas functioning as an integral a part of the larger U.S. Navy; Naval Air Methods Command; and Commander, Fleet Readiness Facilities.
