Innovative Solutions for Legacy Systems Landing Gear Plastics Modernization Using Plastic Additive Manufacturing

“Most Military Aircraft Fell Short on Readiness in Past Decade.” The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report argues the Defense Department has a “limited capability to repair parts when they break.” The GAO claims the DOD’s ability to repair parts is eight years behind schedule.  A major contributor to the lack of aircraft readiness is the availability of spare parts. Only 52 percent of the F-35 fleet was ready to take on a combat mission due to the lack of availability of spare parts.  In 2018, the Defense Department had a backlog of 4,300 parts for the F-35 alone.  The Air Force needs innovative Advanced Manufacturing (AM) and Sustainment technologies to rapidly develop, produce, and sustain our nation’s most critical weapon systems. AM technologies are becoming a proven, accepted process to produce end item parts. The applications and use-cases of AM technology are growing with the development of better equipment and higher performing polymer materials and alloys being developed today.    A specific use-case resides with the AFMC Landing Gear Systems Program Office (LGSPO) as they seek innovative AM and Sustainment technologies to rapidly develop, produce, and sustain critical plastic landing gear components for the B-1B, F-16, C-5, C-130 and B-52 fleets. Most of these original equipment manufacturing (OEM) landing gear components were designed and fabricated in the late 1970’s (or earlier) and lack the necessary three-dimensional (3D) data and material analysis to benefit from current AM capabilities. This has pin-holed LGSPO to depend on traditional machine-shops; requiring them to pay top-dollar and receive unreliable lead times and product availability.  Elevate Systems (Elevate) is a digital engineering (DE) and additive AM firm with a strong pedigree in design, prototype, and test within the commercial and DoD marketplaces. With over 55 commercial and government clients generating over $7.5M in revenue, Elevate has the experience needed to bring these cutting-edge capabilities to the Air Force. As such, the LGSPO at Hill Air Force Base has been in discussions with Elevate and is a committed end-user and customer for Elevate’s Customer Memorandum. Using Elevate System’s innovative approach to incorporating AM technologies will save the AF hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, providing the AF with the obsolete parts needed for war preparation will save the lives of our warfighters. In this Phase II, Elevate will analyze the plastic inserts prevalent in most landing gear components today.  Elevate will reverse engineer the inserts and develop a 3D model of the plastic inserts for prototype. Elevate will also study the polymer materials that are available today since the technologies are progressing so fast.  Elevate will perform preliminary fit checks with the prototypes and iterat. Finally, Elevate will create a library of 3D models for the AF.