Army Technology Could Enable 3D-Printed Metal Replacement Parts for Soldiers

Materials manufacturing scientists at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory  are looking at new technologies to rapidly create replacement parts for soldiers, and are working with a metal alloy called AF96 that was originally developed by the U.S. Air Force. The Army researchers first adapted the metal to powder form. Using the process Powder Bed Fusion, a 3D printer's laser selectively melts the powder in a pattern. The printer then coats the build plate with another layer of powder and the process is repeated until the part is complete. The laboratory is working closely with industry and academic researchers to model new alloy designs, perform computational thermodynamics, and expedite the process to get the materials to soldiers.

Transcript

00:00:00 In the future Soldiers needing replacement parts may turn to 3-D printers to rapidly deliver reliable and ultra strong metal parts at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, materials manufacturing scientists say this technology may change everything. I think it's going to probably revolutionize logistics so we're still a long ways out from that but really additive manufacturing is gonna have a huge impact on sustainment so you can really reduce your logistics footprint so instead of worrying about carrying a whole truckload convoys loads of spares as long as you have the materials the raw materials and a printer you can potentially make anything you need army

00:00:43 researchers are looking at new technologies to create steel alloy parts from powder using a laser sample we've done some stuff with our collaborators we were able to print parts with internal structures that they would not necessarily be able to create with that much dimensional accuracy where they use to try to mill or let me show you apart the researchers are using an alloy originally developed by the U.S. Air Force, the Army adapted the metal to powder form this material that we've we've just printed and developed processing parameters for is probably about 50 percent stronger than anything commercially available for army applications the key to usage is certification will the PARCC work is needed in a battlefield scenario for

00:01:27 instance we've printed some impeller fans for the M1 Abrams turbine engine and we can deliver that part they can use it it works that may be good enough and be able to get your tank running again for you know hours or days if that's important to the mission but on the other hand we still need to be able to answer okay does this perform as good as the OEM part does it perform better which is ultimately what we would like to help mitigate the failures that we see in the first place the Air Force initially developed this alloy for bunker-busting bombs they needed a metal that was very high strength but it also needed to be economical the nice thing about that for the Army is it has wide-ranging applications so we have interests from the ground combat vehicle

00:02:07 community so it can be used for replacement parts a lot of our parts and ground vehicles now are steel so this can be dropped in as a replacement not having to worry about but your properties you know it's gonna be better so the chance of it breaking are gonna be lower than your previous part the laboratory is working closely with industry and academic researchers to model new alloy designs perform computational thermodynamics and expedite the process to get these materials to Soldiers what does the next-generation alloy look like how do we take the knowledge we learn from this steel and push it even further to get even better materials