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Rapid Part Qualification Methodology of Aircraft Metallic Components using Direct Digital Manufacturing Technologies

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Navy
Contract: N00014-11-M-0188
Agency Tracking Number: N111-077-0219
Amount: $79,951.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N111-077
Solicitation Number: 2011.1
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2011
Award Year: 2011
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2011-05-09
Award End Date (Contract End Date): N/A
Small Business Information
698 SW Port Saint Lucie Blvd Suite 105
Port Saint Lucie, FL -
United States
DUNS: 114133213
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Bryant Walker
 President
 (772) 343-7544
 bryant@keystonehq.com
Business Contact
 Bryant Walker
Title: President
Phone: (772) 343-7544
Email: bryant@keystonehq.com
Research Institution
 Stub
Abstract

Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) reduces cost and energy content of manufactured parts and enables producing parts-on-demand. The DDM process can reduce part acquisition time from several months to less than a few days. DDM reduces energy and machining cost by eliminating tooling and reducing by 10-20 times the buy-to-fly ratios of conventionally produced titanium parts. However, to achieve timely realization of these benefits, a rapid certification method is required for DDM of a wide range of metallic parts having diverse geometries. Presently, in order to ensure airworthiness, DDM parts must pass a lengthy and costly certification process. This significantly affects the Navy"s ability to use DDM to produce parts-on-demand. Thus, Keystone proposes an innovative method for part certification using a heuristic and adaptive approach and processing maps combined with non-destructive inspection, metallurgical review and limited mechanical property tests. The proposed project strategy envisions that an aircraft component can be composed of several standardized, building blocks of simple 3-dimensional geometric shapes and manufactured using'sweet spot'parameters and practices. These representative geometric elements of a component, when fabricated using sweet spot process parameters and manufacturing practices, properly tested for defects, microstructure and mechanical properties, will enable establishment of a qualification algorithm and used for rapidly qualifying additional parts.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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