ADVANCING SCALMALLOY USE THROUGH REPLACEMENT OF MAGNESIUM ALLOY CASTINGS

Quadrus Corporation is pleased to present this proposal for using additively manufactured (AM) Scalmalloy® as a replacement for ZE41A-T5 magnesium alloy castings on the UH-60 Black Hawk rotary wing aircraft. Our efforts will also show that an AM Scalmalloy tail rotor gearbox housing will offer a significant improvement in lifecycle cost over its cast magnesium alloy counterpart, which results from several attractive features exhibited by AM Scalmalloy:Lower production costs due to Scalmalloy’s proven additive manufacturability, with its proven minimal material costs and low rate of part rejection from manufacturing defects.Lower sustainment costs through longer operational service life, due to Scalmalloy’s superiority in every relevant material property, especially corrosion resistance.Larger potential vendor base compared to the small and dwindling supplier base for magnesium alloy casting.Quadrus’ advanced manufacturing division is highly experienced with processing Scalmalloy® and was the first American company to be certified by APWORKS to process it commercially. We achieved certification in 2019 through an extensive process development effort capped by independent verification that our achieved tensile properties were within family to APWORKS extensive material property database.  Since then, our team participated in the NCDMM AMNOW program as the Scalmalloy supplier.That experience is crucial to our success in Phase I, because our plan uses a high-risk, high-payoff approach toward greatly improving the laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process for Scalmalloy.  The process improvement is centered upon eliminating oxygen contamination in the finished product.