February 2023 Volume 5

FORGING RESEARCH

An AFRL Student’s Experience By Luke Weston

In the spring of 2020, when people were just starting to notice COVID, all of my friends were getting their internships cancelled. However, mine never did cancel, which already gave me a good impression of my employer. I was set to intern at the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL), and being a part of the Department of Defence (DoD), they continued operating as much as possible given the circumstances. So instead of going into the labs, I evaluated thermal analysis software completely remotely for the summer to predict thermal deformations of titanium satellite parts. I quickly learned that working on the government side offers great job security and an extremely unique set of applications, materials, and processes to work with that are beyond the reach/interest of most private companies and academic institutions. On topof this, coming inperson to theMaterials andManufacturing Directorate (RX) and working with lab equipment in their Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) and Materials Characterization Facility (MCF) for that internship the following summer (2021) completely convinced me to work for AFRL. It was a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between demonstrative laboratory-scale manufacturing and true industry-scale and pace manufacturing. Something important to note is that the Air Force is the executive agent of Title III of the Defense Production Act, meaning every critical defense manufacturing project from uniform textiles to massive naval drive shaft forging is managed by engineers at AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate. After graduating from Iowa State with my undergrad in Materials Engineering, I came back to AFRL in the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate through the Palace Acquire program (PAQ), which will consist of a year of on the job training I am currently partaking in, a year of getting my Master’s next year at no cost to me, and another year on the job training after that. Currently, I’m split between the hypersonic and propulsion teams, working on x-ray CT surface roughness analysis at the in house labs and taking my first stab at project management with some efforts run by external contractors. I am also waiting to hear back regarding two abstracts that I’ve submitted for my branch’s “Discovery Fund,” which we use to seed ideas that can grow into

full scale manufacturing technologies over time. The range of scale and variety of forgings (and every other material process under the sun) of interest to the DoD is truly immense and is a great field of opportunity for young people who would like to both have and eat the cake of every level and type of forging imaginable. If you would like to know more about the PAQ Program, please visit: https:// afciviliancareers.com/paq-scienceengineering/. Luke Weston

Palace Acquire – RXMS Air Force Research Labs Phone: 937-255-6926 Email: luke.weston@us.af.mil

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