What is the future in defense industry for additive manufacturing technology in your opinion, anon? Firearms, MBTs, jet engines, etc. Discuss.
Additive Manufacturing
What is the future in defense industry for additive manufacturing technology in your opinion, anon? Firearms, MBTs, jet engines, etc. Discuss.
we were robbed
holy shit she's so ugly that thing deserved to lose worse than the x-32
integrated circuits inside metal hulls (via 3d printing) could be major but that is many years off
imagine a ship with no wiring
Zoomers are intrinsically against repairing things.
Sounds like a nightmare to repair or troubleshoot.
if it does not come with a failsafe self repair function i rather not have it.
already exists bud, I used to work for a company that used aerosol jet tech to 3d print circuits inside of missile hulls to run traces instead of wires.
you can stack em by printing layers of circuit trace and then a layer of insulator, and basically make a super dense ribbon cable.
There's been several symposia on the matter (some of which I've attended) and the conclusion is: nothing gamechanging yet. Firearms? only prototyping apart from where niche geometry is required such as in suppressors. MBT's? Not gonna do much if you look at armor - but maybe it could diffuse into drivetrain components. Jet engines is going to be a huge challenge because of the tech level required and the expertise currently existing in subtractive manufacturing. Maybe, on a few parts only.
>Wiring inside metal hulls
>Hulls which are intended to give protection
Not gonna happen. With very few exceptions, additive strength does not exceed subtractive or formative.
>Automated production of around 10-20 AR-15 style rifles a day.
Why? Too large of a signature for rebellion, not enough production for a government.
>Blades and blisks production is metallurgical voodoo.
This guy knows.
Tesla bringchip will bring dead into fighting shape
couple of companies experimenting with rocket engines, probably jet engines too.
most of the other stuff wouldn't benefit as much from additive methods but for engines with weird internal geometry it's a bomus.
also some newer sound suppressors are experimenting with it for the same reason.
We're not experimenting, all primary components of any modern rocket engine are manufactured using SLS powder bed machines.
>SLS powder bed machines.
that's not SLS.
Correct. It's DED.
A few years back AMCOM completely disassembled a black hawk and made scans of every part. Basically, Sikorsky wound up production of parts for older models and the hope was to leverage additive manufacturing to cost effectively make replacements for some of them with low total production.
I can see that being part of the trend moving forward - the black hawk wasn't designed with additive manufacturing in mind, so lots of the tolerances, dimensions etc. with the less effective material so I think only about 1% of parts were suitable for it on first pass. But if you designed it from the ground up to be, you could massively improve that number. And then suddenly your airbases and carriers and repair depots don't need a stock of Part As and a stock of Part Bs etc. you carry feedstock and make the part you need as you need them, and only carry the stuff thats impractical to use AM for. You're more flexible while also putting less logistical strain on the system.
I wrote all the CNC laser programming for the blackhawk exhaust system. The process as a whole was a nightmare. So many steps, so many shit vacuum tools, so many stacking tolerances.
You do know feds monitor this site, right?
I'm not going to share any ITAR secrets. LOL.
The company i worked for had one of the exhaust assemblies on a shelf once that could be seen from an exterior window. The google maps van went by and it there was a picture of a legit ITAR restricted item on street view. ROFL.
>ROFL
i love /k/
printed efficient injectors that take advantage of un-machinable geometry are becoming a bigger thing these days.
Blades and blisks production is metallurgical voodoo. The rough parts are grown from monocrystaline alloys and inflated almost like injection molding. You'll never be able to print them until we can align individual atoms and keep the crystal structure.
Can you explain this monocrystaline alloy production?
I have been wondering if someone could set-up a mini manufacturing line. Automated production of around 10-20 AR-15 style rifles a day. Combination of 3D printing, laser cutting and CNC. Has to be able to fit in a basement.
you're not going to be able to automate any heat treatment on a basement scale.
The dream is to create AI aided designs that are otherwise impractical to manufacture with the methods we have today.
Some company has already done that with cars. Their production rate is absolutely laughable, but the idea is neat.
as someone with a useless masters in additive mfg, my answer is: sure yeah whatever. The real whizzbang is with stuff like generative design.
The biggest advantage additive offers is complex geometry so fans, pumps, turbines and anywhere else fluid-dynamics matters we'll see significant improvement.
I'm waiting to see the first printed flow optimized cylinder head, it's going to look strange with tuned lengths but should be a decent improvement.
BMW has been 3D printing the sand cores used to mold their cylinder heads (among other parts) for several years now. They're able to achieve some fabulous geometry that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Thanks anon.
Additive manufactured suppressors are clearly superior to conventional options. Rocket nozels/engines are moving that way. As SLS machines get faster/better we'll probably see lots of stuff 3D printed due to being faster to make than casting and milling.
Even cast metal is stronger than 3d prints. I don't see any way around this due to the nature of the process. For commensurate strength with other metalworking methods, you need much, much more material, which makes the process materially inefficient in exchange for dramatically simplifying the manufacturing process. You're just not going to see 3d-printed parts required to withstand the great forces involved in combat. If it ever happens at all, it's decades away.
>doesn't know how rockets are made
ngmi
It's not 1:1. If a rocket was required to withstand the same forces as, for example, a Stryker chassis, all rockets would be made from steel. I could see a rocket incorporating 3d-printed parts because every single force can be (and is) exhaustively modeled and solved. You can (probably) discern every force involved on every square millimeter of a rocket because it's, in a way, a much simpler machine. You can exhaustively tailor each and every millimeter of a rocket for a set of discrete, knowable forces which will never be exceeded because a rocket only travels along one trajectory. You don't have to engineer a rocket to go sideways because it's always going to be tip-first. I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but a heavy combat vehicle trundling across bumpy, rutted fields and getting hit with small arms fire is just going to have na unknowable amount of variables to account for in terms of engineering for stress. The only solution is to build stronger than you hope you'll ever need, and you can't build that strong with 3d-printing.
>additive manufacturing
>industry 4.0
>digital twin
>buzzword
>buzzword
>buzzword
How much I hate this kind of shit.
Anon additive manufacturing just means 3d printing and derivatives thereof, whereas subtractive manufacturing is the traditional method of cutting stuff from bigger pieces then joining it together.
>traditional method of cutting stuff from bigger pieces then joining it together
Which has the advantage of being able to get really autistic with the metallurgy of the whole piece of metal before you start shaping it. The really advanced metallurgical advances all involve processes more advanced than just kinda taking particles of metal and adding them onto one another.
https://www.army.mil/article/247076/gvsc_awards_contract_to_build_largest_metal_3d_printer_ever
3D metal "printing" is nothing but 3D laser-based sintering. So you've got all the cons of regular-ass sintering just as being porous as fuck.
It's not like we'll see 3D printed tanks or something.
>jet engines
They're already using 3D printing to make turbine disks for one of the 777 variants. SpaceX is using it for some of the more complex parts in its Raptor engine also -- things that simply can't be molded or machined because internal voids for cooling can't be made any other way.
There'a a lot more of it than you'd think, it's mature and proven out at this point. It's especially useful for prototypes- we got seven custom heat sinks made locally in under a week. There's not a machine shop in the country that'd make a single one of those via conventional CNC for the price we paid for all seven, and we'd be talking lead times in months instead of days.
I've seen titanium and inconel parts being built via DMLS, and as of a few years ago one of the engine companies gave me a demo of repairing fan blades via a combo of DMLS and conventional machine operations. The future is bright