An Innovative Machining Process to Rifle Titanium Alloy Line Gun Barrels

Tantalum alloy lined gun barrels offer significant promise over chromium lined barrels as well as the chromium lining process has been restricted for environmental reasons. However, tantalum’s inherent properties have presented a significant challenge to machine rifling in a tantalum lined barrel. An established cost effective machining process has demonstrated straight aligned rifles can be machined into Ta-10W. This program proposes to set-up synchronized motions to adapt this demonstrated Ta-10W machining process to produce rifling profiles that meets the 25 mm Bushmaster barrel specifications. Because high contact forces are not required, rifling profiling will initially be demonstrated in commercially available Ta-10W tubes followed by rifling explosively bonded Ta-10W clad truncated 12 inch barrel sections and delivery of such barrel sections to the Army. The cost effectiveness of this machining process to rifle production length barrels will be demonstrated.