NIAR is the National Institute for Aviation Research, a department of Wichita State University that provides design, testing, certification and training to the aviation manufacturing industry, government agencies and other clients. NIAR is home to more than a dozen laboratories that study crash dynamics, additive manufacturing, full-scale structural testing, robotics and automation, virtual reality, and more.
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The answer to why additive manufacturing (AM) has not — after decades of research and development — moved faster toward industrial-scale production isn’t because the technology lacks sophistication. Quite the opposite is true. The options it offers are so vast that understanding and characterizing them can overwhelm additive’s fundamental advantages.
This problem is acute in heavily regulated industries such as commercial aviation, where suppliers are required to follow qualification and equivalency standards issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
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为了维持行业的安全记录，FAA添加剂制造的资格标准加起来是组成材料要求和验收标准的拜占庭目录。直到最近，这些标准必须通过临时测试和批准来满足这些标准，这是一个限制制造基地的漫长而昂贵的过程。
NIAR utilizes undergrad and graduate student workers to help process thousands of test coupons a week. The resulting data is aggregated for NIAR’s National Center for Advanced Material Performance, or NCAMP.
但是，在过去的几年中，商业航空业越来越多地认识到增材制造业有助于飞机制造商满足预期需求激增的潜力 - 即波音和空中客车预计到2050年的需求增加了一倍。
But using AM in this way would be impossible without streamlining the FAA’s qualification process for additively produced parts.
输入NIAR：您可能从未听说过的最大机构。
NIAR is the National Institute for Aviation Research, a department of Wichita State University that provides design, testing, certification and training to the aviation manufacturing industry, government agencies and other clients. NIAR is home to more than a dozen laboratories that study crash dynamics, additive manufacturing, full-scale structural testing, robotics and automation, virtual reality, and more.
But relevant to this story, NIAR houses the National Center for Advanced Material Performance, or NCAMP, a program that evolved from a materials working group formed in 1995 by NASA, tasked with reducing aviation manufacturing time and cost by making material property data shareable.
So why does all of this matter?
我在前往堪萨斯州威奇托（Wichita）与NIAR技术开发和特殊计划总监Paul Jonas会面后，于今年早些时候了解到了答案。在那里，乔纳斯（Jonas）在NIAR中引入了一项新的开发项目，这是与增材制造有关的发展，他认为这将使更大的航空业，尤其是国内行业，这是满足未来几十年预计需求的最佳机会。
控制
NCAMP已由美国联邦航空局（FAA），欧洲航空安全局（EASA）和美国军方的所有分支机构指定为公认的航空材料允许物品的公认数据库。在我的访问期间，乔纳斯（Jonas）和尼亚尔（NIAR）团队的其他成员都在等待FAA行业指导委员会的消息，涉及它是否批准了NCAMP的首次增材制造资格计划。该材料是Ultem 9085，它是由Stratasys生产的树脂，通常以其高强度比率，耐热性和耐化学性能以及火焰，烟雾和毒性的阳性等级而被吹捧，这些都是飞机内部组件的所有重要品质可以用于3D打印。
NCAMP于今年4月完成了ULTEM 9085的测试，并在几天之内在线发布了该计划。正式的标题为“聚合物添加剂制造材料，机器，处理和质量需求规格，用于Ultem TM 9085和Stratasys Inc. Fortus 900MC机器”，该过程规格大概是增加添加剂复合材料和聚合物材料的第一个。通过NCAMP为ULTEM 9085的该资格计划的出版，航空制造商现在拥有首个公开，高度详细的路线图，用于监管部门的批准，用于为该行业生产加法零件。
航空工业已经口头教育arly, Jonas says: It needs additive manufacturing.
NCAMP originated in 1995 around composite materials, essentially serving two needs: qualifying and creating allowables for new composite materials and approving processes for use out of a material and process database.
例如，如果X公司发明材料Y，则该公司将需要创建数千个测试优惠券，与NCAMP合作以测试新材料，并在此过程中产生大量材料数据。NCAMP将将数据转换为材料允许数据集，并将数据发布在NCAMP网站上，并将其提交给CMH-17（Composite Materials Handbook-17），这是一本公认的行业手册。
Or, if Company X wants to manufacture an aviation part with an existing polymer composite material, the company downloads the material and process specification from the NCAMP website and incorporates those specs into its production processes. The company then creates test coupons with the composite and sends them to NCAMP. After NCAMP cuts and tests the coupons — i.e., after it runs its equivalency process — if the resulting test data pools statistically with the larger NCAMP database for that composite, NCAMP gives the company approval to use the process.
As Jonas puts it, “If you test under the NCAMP process and NCAMP puts its stamp of approval on it, it’s approved data.”
Data resulting from test coupons, or “dog bones,” is automatically uploaded into NCAMP’s database. Some of this data will ultimately reside in the Composite Materials Handbook-17.
虽然这是一个标准的过程aviation composites for years, nothing like it existed for additive manufacturing, at least not until 2017 when the FAA commissioned NIAR to generate the process to include non-metallic additive manufacturing under the NCAMP umbrella. While a parallel process for metal AM is still in its infancy, developing the first database for non-metallic AM materials represents a major development in the world of additive manufacturing for aviation. But getting from the FAA’s initial request to NCAMP’s recent publication of the Ultem 9085 qualification program was no easy task. It took months of testing and calibrating a very specific printer — the Stratasys Fortus 900mc Plus — the only printer allowable under the NCAMP program for Ultem 9085.
The specifications and sheer number of controls documented within NCAMP’s first AM qualification program may strike some as being too rigorous. But NIAR officials say there’s a reason and necessity for this level detail: Repeatability.
共依赖性
This past April, NCAMP completed testing for its first-ever additive manufacturing qualification program. After running tens of thousand of tests on the material, Ultem 9085, the program became the first publicly available roadmap toward regulatory approval for AM parts in the aviation industry.
The qualification program for Ultem 9085 is machine-and-process-dependent, including specifications that go so far as to require a particular extruder tip and modification package to the Fortus 900mc. In other words, process controls are everything.
乔纳斯说：“你必须处于这个水平。”“如果您不控制该过程，那么您将拥有一个流程参数的杂物。现在就是这样。”
In a way, this granular level of process specificity is the entire point of NCAMP’s additive manufacturing qualification program. NCAMP partnered with America Makes, which funded the printing of the initial baseline coupons at RP+M in Cleveland. NCAMP later selected two equivalency sites — Stratasys Direct Manufacturing in Belton, Texas, and Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Florida — to prove that the specifications were transferable from site to site.
Chris Holshouser, now technical director for advanced manufacturing development at NIAR, was transitioning from Lockheed Martin Skunkworks to Stratasys when NIAR began working on the Ultem project in 2017. His focus had been trying to optimize build processes so that every technician tasked with using a machine could perform like the most skilled technician in the company. It wasn’t just variations between the technicians that caused discrepancies, he says, but variations between identical machine models. Holshouser says that he and his team at Stratasys spent more than two years trying to understand what was going on during the build process that was causing variations from technician to technician and machine to machine.
“Process control isn’t a new thing,” he says. “Obviously it’s used within almost every area of manufacturing out there. It has to be. But what’s unique to additive, and I think what throws people off, is that there are so many parameters. You get lost in trying to figure out what needs to be controlled and what is truly important. That was really the heart of what we were able to do leading into this program — to say we had confidence that in our process specs, we are really balancing what’s important. Everything else is considered standard operating procedure.”
While the qualification guidelines for Ultem 9085 are exacting, NCAMP does allow for variations. If a company wants to modify a process spec, it can apply for equivalency. If the company can perform the requisite tests and prove its process to be equivalent to the guideline, NCAMP will issue a letter of equivalency for its process. Nor does NCAMP preclude any company from developing its own proprietary processes or database with an OEM. But Jonas says that one of the major benefits of NCAMP’s new qualification program for additive manufacturing is to set the industry free from requiring these kinds of proprietary partnerships. It’s a benefit that sits squarely with NIAR’s mission of enabling the aviation industry, and the industry has spoken clearly, Jonas says: It needs additive manufacturing.
像机器一样
NCAMP’s first-ever AM qualification program (Ultem 9085) limits production to one machine: the Stratasys Fortus 900mc Plus. NIAR officials say there’s a reason for this: repeatability.
NIAR也许是航空业最大的enabler toward the move to AM. Though it is industry financed and heavily involved in standards organizations beyond the FAA and EASA, it is necessarily low-key due to the number of non-disclosure agreements it signs. But its expansive campus is teeming with PhDs as well asap student workers who help NIAR process literally thousands of test coupons a week.
乔纳斯（Jonas）和霍尔什（Holshouser）说，NCAMP正试图破解添加剂制造生产能力，并使AM机器能够反复保持发际公差，而无需考虑谁在操作机器或在哪里操作。
“We have to get it right,” Holshouser says. “This is us really trying to crack into true manufacturing as opposed to rapid prototyping — to get these machines to act like manufacturing machines. That's really why we have extremely tight limits on everything. People have to believe that the technology can be stabilized and is ready for prime time. And I think we’ve proved that it is.”
