Marines 3D-Print Part to Repair Their F-35s

[Winston]

Marines 3D-Print Part to Repair Their F-35s
23 Aug 2018

https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/marines-3d-print-part-to-repair-multi-million-dollar-fighter/

The good news: all you need to complete the repair you’re working on is one small part. The bad news: it’s only available in a larger, expensive assembly. The worst news: shipping time is forever. We’ve all been there, and it’s a hard pill to swallow for the DIYer. Seems like a good use case for 3D-printing.

Now imagine you’re a US Marine, and instead of fixing a dishwasher or TV remote, you’ve got a $123 million F-35 fighter in the shop. The part you need is a small plastic bumper for the landing gear door, but it’s only available as part of the whole door assembly, which costs $70,000 taxpayer dollars. And lead time to get it shipped from the States is measured in weeks. Can you even entertain the notion of 3D-printing a replacement? It turns out you can, and it looks like there will be more additive manufacturing to come in Corps repair depots around the world.

Details of the printed part are not forthcoming for obvious reasons, but the part was modeled in Blender and printed in PETG on what appears to be a consumer-grade printer. The part was installed after a quick approval for airworthiness, and the grounded fighter was back in service within days. It’s encouraging that this is not a one-off; other parts have been approved for flight use by the Marines, and a whole catalog of printable parts for ground vehicles is available too. This is the reality that the 3D printing fiction of Lost in Space builds upon.

A comment found below that article. This sort of crap shouldn't be necessary.

barry99705 says:
August 23, 2018 at 4:43 am

Lots of aircraft parts are that way. The springs that push the crew entry handles out on F-15Es would wear out and break. Couldn’t just buy the spring, you had to buy the whole handle assembly. Then either take the new one apart to get the spring, or replace the whole assembly, which is riveted in place. Someone came up with a new spring that consisted of a piece of bent spring steel riveted into the handle channel.

 

[KC3KNM]

When I was at Whiteman we used to have a hell of a time potting the connector on the stick grips on the B-2. When I got there they were using cut up dust caps to mold the potting compound around the connector. The issue was that the caps they had were too large and typically ended up with too large of a diameter of potting compound that mated to the inside of the grip. It would take three people and a pair of pliers to remove the connector when the grips came in for repair. I managed to get a 3D printed mold approved for use that fixed the issue. It took a few months of fighting with QA to get it approved.

The amount of money that goes into these programs is insane, yet there’s a lot of things that end up accepted as “well it sucks, but that’s just how it is”. I’m glad to see more creative thinking being encouraged. It’ll save time and money, for sure.

 

[MClark]

So they installed a part with no traceability, not made to print (unlikely real part is 3D printed) and untested.
And this is a good thing?
I understand there is a problem with supply but using cobbled up unknown quality parts is not the answer.

 

[Winston]

So they installed a part with no traceability, not made to print (unlikely real part is 3D printed) and untested.
And this is a good thing?
I understand there is a problem with supply but using cobbled up unknown quality parts is not the answer.

I was thinking exactly the same thing, but I'd hope that a Senior NCO Maintenance Superintendent was closely involved for research and approval and I'll bet there was.

 

[cwbullet]

When I was at Whiteman

Man, I gotta where my bifocals. I though for sure I was going to have give you a warning. I read that as “when I was a white man”.

Fantastic story. I do think 3D printers are going to be the future of part manufacturing on many levels. We are beginning to use them in almost every profession. Medicine is starting to test them. Dental uses them. 3D printers are cheap enough to have one in almost every home. Just a touch more capability and competing pricing and they well be.

 

[dr wogz]

Man, I gotta where my bifocals. I though for sure I was going to have give you a warning. I read that as “when I was a white man”.

Fantastic story. I do think 3D printers are going to be the future of part manufacturing on many levels. We are beginning to use them in almost every profession. Medicine is starting to test them. Dental uses them. 3D printers are cheap enough to have one in almost every home. Just a touch more capability and competing pricing and they well be.

Remember when we were amazed by the notion of a 'replicator' on Star Trek?!?

A local company (I think they're defunct now) had a brilliant idea. They opened up a shop that would help replace the mundane little thing that broke, but a replacement is either costly or unavailable. They were talking about things like the volume knob off your Walkman, the lever off your toaster, the bracket for the bike safety bell. those kinds of things. that when broken render an otherwise still useable device useless..

 

[Winston]

When I was at Whiteman we used to have a hell of a time potting the connector on the stick grips on the B-2. When I got there they were using cut up dust caps to mold the potting compound around the connector. The issue was that the caps they had were too large and typically ended up with too large of a diameter of potting compound that mated to the inside of the grip. It would take three people and a pair of pliers to remove the connector when the grips came in for repair. I managed to get a 3D printed mold approved for use that fixed the issue. It took a few months of fighting with QA to get it approved.

The amount of money that goes into these programs is insane, yet there’s a lot of things that end up accepted as “well it sucks, but that’s just how it is”. I’m glad to see more creative thinking being encouraged. It’ll save time and money, for sure.

Nice. Never liked the smell of the gray potting compound we used. What a sticky mess, too.

I've got a couple war stories myself. One of them was after I cross-trained to comm. We had a large number of microwave radio sets capable of high data rates that the USAF hadn't bought a particular convenience option for, a very handy convenience option. Luckily, the T.O. theory section was outstanding and even thought the option hadn't been purchased, the un-programmed EPROMS were in their sockets. I wrote a program in GFA BASIC to create the pages of correct hex code to manually program into the two EPROMS of one system, then tested it against a system without the mod. Worked great so I then programmed all of the EPROMS.

 

[KC3KNM]

Nice. Never liked the smell of the gray potting compound we used. What a sticky mess, too.

I've got a couple war stories myself. One of them was after I cross-trained to comm. We had a large number of microwave radio sets capable of high data rates that the USAF hadn't bought a particular convenience option for, a very handy convenience option. Luckily, the T.O. theory section was outstanding and even thought the option hadn't been purchased, the un-programmed EPROMS were in their sockets. I wrote a program in GFA BASIC to create the pages of correct hex code to manually program into the two EPROMS of one system, then tested it against a system without the mod. Worked great so I then programmed all of the EPROMS.

It’s not the best smelling stuff, that’s for sure. It wasn’t a great time managing the HAZCOM program and having to clean up the mess people left behind in the locker, either. I don’t miss that.

That sounds like a hell of a project. I miss how good some of the T.O.s were. When we had units running I used to like skimming through them, lots of great info in there.

We got to do some pretty cool stuff when I worked with AFREP and AFETS. I was never assigned to either, but got lucky enough to work a few projects with them. In our shop there was very little that we were allowed to do that wasn’t directed by our depot, and they didn’t seem to be all that interested in doing much. Our tech school was a joke and from what I’ve heard it used to be much more in-depth than it is now. It’s a shame, really.