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Aeronautical Case Studies Using Rapid Manufacture

John Wooten
On-Demand Manufacturing

15.1 Introduction The introduction of a new technology always involves either real or perceived risks (or both) to the end product. The benets for implementing new technologies clearly must outweigh those risks in order for the change to happen successfully. This is especially true for aerospace hardware where certication of a new manufacturing process must be demonstrated and approved, and even then there are still concerns because of the potential consequences. Hardware is being manufactured today for the F/ A-18E/F Super Hornet (see Figure 15.1) and other aircraft using technology that until recently was only used to manufacture prototype hardware. The benets that allowed this technology to be implemented are discussed and compared to the risks that had to be overcome.

15.2 Problem and Proposed Solution In February 2000, the US Navy partnered with the Boeing Company with the goal to reduce signicantly the unit cost of the forward fuselage of the F/ A-18 and begin the incorporation of six new avionics systems. In addition to reducing the unit cost, two other key goals were established: shorten cycle

Rapid Manufacturing: An Industrial Revolution for the Digital Age Editors N. Hopkinson, R.J.M. Hague and P.M. Dickens # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ISBN: 0-470-01613-2

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Aeronautical Case Studies Using Rapid Manufacture

Figure 15.1 The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. (Reproduced by permission of Boeing)

time from 34 to 18 months and reduce quality defects by 90 %. With the addition of the six new avionic systems, additional cooling was required. Also, there were associated components, such as electrical covers and shrouds, that would be needed to help meet these aggressive goals. Given the limited space in the jet ghter, cooling ducts (Environmental Control System, or ECS) needed to be designed such that the ducting could be accommodated in the space restriction while simultaneously meeting the goals. For several reasons discussed below, nylon-11 parts, fabricated by selective laser sintering (SLS), were the ideal fabrication solution if all the performance and manufacturing requirements could be met. Geometries of typical SLS-manufactured ducting showing complexity including integral attach features are presented in Figure 15.2. Even though Boeing had demonstrated the feasibility to Rapid Manufacture components from SLS nylon-11, two issues needed to be addressed and resolved before this technology could be implemented: 1. ECS ducts are not primary structural components, but they must be engineered and have certain guaranteed minimum mechanical and physical properties. 2. They must be made accurately enough to t on to the platform and interface with the rest of the plane. If these two conditions could be satised, then SLS could be considered as a viable fabrication method for the ECS duct. Because SLS would allow the ECS ducts to be built one layer at a time, it would be possible to add in features that would have to be added or accommodated with additional parts if alternative fabrication technologies were utilized. Thus, the benets started to become clear.

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Figure 15.2

Computer aided design (CAD) les for complex ducting components

15.3 Benets of a Rapid Manufacture Solution 15.3.1 Design Flexibility Benets The design exibility provided by a layer-build process enables complex, ECS duct congurations to be manufactured that would be difcult or impossible to make by other fabrication technology, such as rotomolding or hand laid-up composites. These alternative techniques could produce parts with the same functionality, but it would require several individual parts that would have to be integrated with each other to produce the same function as one SLS part. Thus, the exibility offered by SLS enables part count reduction, which helped the F/A-18 program meet its goals. An additional feature, which could be easily incorporated into the part, was the integral attachments. These are built into the ducts and eliminate the need for the standard or normal types of attachment mechanisms, e.g. hose clamps, and simplify the installation procedure and shorten the assembly time. Taking these factors into account, a system level cost analysis was performed and compared to ducting systems produced by rotomolding. As

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Aeronautical Case Studies Using Rapid Manufacture

Figure 15.3 Cost comparison between Rapid Manufacturing (RM) and rotomolding

Figure 15.4

Various components built as single units with RM

can be seen in Figure 15.3, approximately a 25 % systems level cost saving is realized. Figure 15.4 shows various features, such as ow straightners, attach points and other integral, complex features, that are built into the parts to enable these cost savings to be realized. One indirect benet of this technology was that preparation time on the plane for attaching the ducts is reduced; e.g. fewer holes were needed. 15.3.2 No Tooling Benets Since SLS builds parts directly from CAD les, no tooling is needed. In addition to eliminating the cost of manufacturing and certifying the tooling, this plays another important role in facilitating the engineering changes that inevitably happen after production commences.

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As design changes occur during the course of a long production run, the effect on the cost of manufacturing an SLS part is negligible. It basically requires loading in the new CAD model and building the part; however, this is not the case where a part is manufactured by a process that uses tooling. In this case, either new tooling has to be made or at the very least reworked. Depending on when the design change is owed down, there is an additional cost on inventory. Because of set-up and tear-down costs, a process that uses tooling, like injection molding, will run several parts at one time and then put them in the inventory. If the inventory cannot be reworked, this inventory may become scrap. Since parts are built and delivered only when needed with SLS, it is not necessary to maintain a large inventory. The inventory reduction is a signicant cost savings, because whether it is kept at the supplier or the end user, it is still a cost that must be accounted for. Further, when changes are made, the inventory becomes scrap (as discussed above) or, at the very least, the parts will have to be reworked. 15.3.3 Systems Benets Because of the elimination of attachment mechanisms, the reduction in number of parts and the conformal design solutions, a weight savings is possible with the substitution of SLS. For any ying platforms, this is always a benet. The F/A-18 determined this to be approximately a 20 % weight savings. As mentioned above, all of the parts could be built without tooling. This made all of the parts (about 60 different details) available early in the program and made it possible to air-ow balance the entire system, which had not been possible before.

15.4 Pre-Production Program With all of these benets, it was still necessary to convince the designers and program managers that the goals of the program could be achieved without exceeding the allowable risks. In order to do this a pre-production program was necessary. This required both recurring effort to develop the designs and non-recurring effort to evaluate the materials and parts. A pre-production (or qualication) program was laid out. It included fabricating a material that could meet or exceed the design requirements for the chosen components and preparing designs. Once these designs were converted to .STL (Standard Triangulation Language) les, the parts could be built and evaluated. This effort included not only fabrication of the hardware but also fabrication of sufcient mechanical and physical property

238 Table 15.1 Build plane Z plane XY plane

Aeronautical Case Studies Using Rapid Manufacture Tensile properties from laser sintered parts UTS (ksi) typical 7.2 7.4 YTS (ksi) typical 4.0 3.9 % Elongation typical 22 38

coupons to verify that the parts could survive the loads, environment and life requirements imposed on these ducts. Thus, a series of tests were conducted using these coupons to verify that the requirements could be achieved and to establish a database. A summary of room temperature tensile properties is presented in Table 15.1. Test beds were designed and constructed using the ECS ducting. The ECS ducts on these test beds were then subjected to environments that imposed static, dynamic and thermal loadings to ensure that they would meet the requirements.

15.5 Production After testing of all the mechanical and physical properties of both the coupons and the ECS ducts was completed, a specication controlling the process was required. This specication ensured that the quality of the ECS ducting would continue to meet or exceed the requirements for the platform. Prior to production, a manufacturing and quality plan had to be developed and implemented that, when coupled with the specication, would ensure that the parts would meet the requirements. On-Demand Manufacturing (ODM), a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary, was established to manufacture and supply these ECS ducts. Incorporated in June 2002, it began fabricating and delivering production hardware in December 2002. One year later, ODM had manufactured and delivered over 2000 ECS ducts to the F/A-18 program as well as similar-type components for several other platforms. The installation of some of these ducts is shown in Figure 15.5. As discussed above, a signicant benet is the ability to make changes to production without incurring signicant non-recurring costs. Several design changes were made in the rst year of production. Had these ducts been fabricated by any process requiring tooling, the tooling would have required re-work or scrapping. With layer-build technology allowing parts to be built directly from CAD les, all of these non-recurring costs have been eliminated.

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Figure 15.5

Ducts in place on the aircraft

15.6 Summary Layer-build technology was successfully implemented on the F/ A-18 program to help achieve the goals established by the US Navy. Nylon-11 ECS ducting and similar components were designed and fabricated by SLS for a low-rate production application. The benets, which included design exibility, no tooling and just-in-time delivery, all contributed to the end customer accepting and allowing this technology to be implemented. The principal difference that allowed SLS to go from Rapid Prototyping to Rapid Manufacturing was the development of material properties that met the requirements and the establishment of a controlled process. Without an established material properties database, it would be extremely difcult to implement a new manufacturing technology.