August 2019 Volume 1

FORGING RESEARCH

Staying on the Forefront of Manufacturing By Polly Graham and Deckland Barnum

As much as any industry player, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has a vested interest in helping to maintain a strong forging industry in America. And for more than 50 years, the DOD’s Manufacturing Technology Program (ManTech) has been the department’s prime investment mechanism for staying at the forefront of defense-essential manufacturing capabilities. That effort brings many different players and initiatives to the table. The ManTech Program includes focused investment in the forging industry through the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which strives to strengthen critical DLA supply chains. In addition, the Forging Defense Manufacturing Consortium acts as the interface between the Forging Industry Association and the DLA, working to develop and deploy integrated solutions to challenging technical and supply chain issues problems. What FDMCDoes PRO-FAST. FDMC has a portfolio of technical projects under its Procurement Readiness Optimization - Forging Advanced Systems and Technologies program (PRO-FAST), supporting modernization efforts of the forging supply chains critical to our nation’s defense. PRO-FAST involves forge shops, small businesses and universities on a variety of technical and supply chain projects, providing forgers with opportunities to engage in government research and development and to interact with teams dedicated to the forging supply chain. FORGE-IT. FDMC enjoys a longstanding partnership with FIA, and many FIAmembers have participated in current and past DLA funded projects. In addition to our technical projects, forgers are able to intercept business opportunities within the DoD’s portfolio through the FORGE-IT team, a group that keeps a pulse on forging related DoD supply chain needs. Through PRO-FAST, the FDMC teams strive to implement this portfolio of solutions across industry and government to support all the defense projects that require forged components. Relevance is Key. Each FDMC research project must have relevance toDLA supply chains by decreasing the overall cost or lead time associated with procuring forged parts. Additionally, research projects must resolve or mitigate a challenge that spans the forging industry as a whole. Each project also needs to engage forge shops in testing solutions and supporting project findings with empirical data. In this way, DLA ensures that ManTech projects enhance manufacturing technology transition and are coordinated across all relevant DOD components. FDMC projects included in the PRO-FAST program as follows:

Direct from the Forge Intensive Quenching The Intensive Quenching initiative offers the forging industry a unique opportunity to improve mechanical properties, reduce energy consumption and reduce the costs of processing steel forgings. Intensive quenching happens when steel forgings get quenched at significantly higher cooling rates than conventional quenching practices. By immersing forgings in custom-designed quench tanks with high volumes of rapidly flowing water, conventional quench distortion and quench cracking are nearly eliminated, creating improved mechanical properties. The end goal of this project is to deploy portable intensive quenching systems at forging operations for nearly in-line, one-piece flow quenching direct from the forge. Innovations in Die Repair The dies used to creative most forged parts suffer extensive wear because of the high stresses and temperatures of the forging process. New dies, of course, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require lead times of six months or more. Extending die life therefore provides substantial cost savings on delivered forged components for DLA procurements. The objective of this project is to extend die life by selective application of themost appropriate welding and cladding methods used for die repair.The project incorporates state-of-the-art laser welding and cladding technology and materials, customized and optimized to repair forging tools. The goal: extending useful tool life by at least 25 percent over current predicted life cycles. DieWear Modeling Forgers rely on software and modeling tools to understand the precise effects of die wear and account for die geometry when trying to accurately predict die life. The objective of this die wear modeling project is to evaluate appropriate die wear models and use the predicted die wear rate to update die tool geometry. Participants compiled material property data and used it to validate heat distortion modeling of forging dies. The software tools that resulted from this project are available for public use for those companies with access to DEFORM software licenses. Forged Fiber Reinforced Aluminum Fiber Reinforced Aluminum (FRA) is a high strength aluminum alloy reinforced with chopped ceramic fibers randomly embedded throughout the aluminum base material. FRA was developed by Triton Systems, Inc., the performing PI for this PRO-FAST project.

FIA MAGAZINE | August 2019 46