Several members of the Ohio General Assembly, including Ohio Senate President Pro Tempore Bob Peterson and Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Cliff Rosenberger, were on hand to see the project’s progress at AMES. Development and testing has been ongoing for the last two years; the Ohio Legislature provided funding in its last Operating Budget, with support from UA’s National Center for Education and Research on Corrosion and Materials Performance (NCERCAMP), AMES, the US Technology Corporation, and SAFEngineering, Inc., an R&D, testing, and evaluation company that actually developed the FAA Certification Plan.
Dr. Rex Ramsier, UA’s senior vice president and provost, said, “We are grateful for the support that the state of Ohio has provided for this first phase of the SPD project, which is making significant progress. This partnership brings together the University’s expertise in corrosion and materials science with the extensive experience that our partners have in aviation and technology to create an exciting opportunity for job creation and technological advancement in Ohio.”
NCERCAMP is the first program of its kind in the country, and was established in 2010 by the DoD and Congress. UA launched an effort in 2006 to help address the cost of corrosion on the US economy, which is thought to be over $400 billion annually. NCERCAMP’s multidisciplinary approach helps both industry and government develop corrosion and materials performance solutions. The collective effort between AMES and UA is creating documented successes with SPD technology and showcasing public-private partnerships.
Greg Smith, director of engineering for AMES, said, “This technology in commercial applications creates significant ongoing opportunities for economic advancement in Ohio through advanced manufacturing and job growth.”
The public-private partnership initiative to expand the useful life of aircraft parts could potentially lead to groundbreaking results: the very first FAA certification for full-scale commercial aircraft repair operations. If this goal is achieved, the process applications for the commercial aviation sector are nearly immeasurable. As we have seen, additive manufacturing allows for the repair of critical components not able to be addressed by traditional subtractive methods.
AMES, a maintenance, repair, and overhaul company that operates out of half a million square feet of hangar and component repair/overhaul facilities at southwest Ohio’s Wilmington Air Park, employs over 800 people at the facility, with even more employed at its Tampa location. It’s less than an hour from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio’s largest single-site employer, which is home to the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), neither of which are strangers to additive manufacturing technology. The region is working to develop emerging technology to help grow the aviation sector and expand the job market, so the possibility of FAA certification is just another step in the right direction. Discuss in the SPD forum at 3DPB.com.
[Source/Images: University of Akron]