Additive Manufacturing that Enables a Low Cost DACS Architecture

Quadrus Corporation is pleased to present this proposal focused upon the use of additive manufacturing for several key components in a proven DACS architecture, which enables us to meet the $100,000 unit cost desired by MDA.  Our partner, Valley Tech Systems, Inc. (VTS), developed an extinguishable DACS (XDACS) under previous MDA SBIR efforts that was designed with low production costs in mind.  At the time of that original development, however, Quadrus had just begun to prove the use of additive manufacturing for refractory materials, so VTS was forced to use expensive ceramic matrix composite (CMC) materials in the hot gas valves and expensive Ti-6Al-4V for the gas generator motor case components.  The effort proposed here will focus on: a) replacing the CMC components with additively manufactured C103 (Nb-10Hf-1Ti), a far more affordable material (compared to CMCs) for which Quadrus has already developed a material property suite (i.e., its tensile property characterization is already complete); and b) replacing the machined, Ti-6Al-4V motor case with additively manufactured Scalmalloy, a more affordable, high strength aluminum alloy for Quadrus has also already developed a material property suite.  Our team will first demonstrate these re-designed components with component level testing, after which the project will culminate in a hot fire test of the complete re-designed XDACS.  Additionally, we will carry out production process analysis to determine both the unit price and the production rate of this new subsystem.