Skip to main content (Press Enter).
 News
    
        Photos

    Week in Photos

    Air Force TV

    Commentaries

    Features

    Art

    About Us
    
        Air Force Senior Leaders
    
        SECAF

    CSAF

    CMSAF

    Biographies

    Fact Sheets

    SECAF Reading List

    CSAF Leadership Library
    
        CSAF Leadership Library 2022

    CSAF Leadership Library 2021

    CSAF Reading List Pre-2020 Archive
    
        2018 CSAF Reading List

    2017 CSAF Reading List

    2016 CSAF Reading List

    CSAF Leadership Library 2023

    CMSAF Leadership Library

    50 Years of the CMSAF

    Adjunct Professors

    Air Force Strategic Documents

    Arctic Strategy

    Empowered Airmen

    State Licensure Portability

    Careers

    AF Federal Advisory Committees

    AF 75th Anniversary

    Policy Updates

    AF Content Management

    Contact Us

    AF Sites
    
        Site RegistrationU.S. Air Force LogoAir Force

        Policy UpdatesNewsroomReoptimizationBIOGRAPHIESAF Senior Leaders      Dr. Mark Benedict, a senior materials engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, discusses the potential for additive manufacturing of aircraft components in metal. The complex geometry of the rocket nozzle benefits from the use of additive manufacturing due to its complex, specialized design. (U.S. Air Force photo/ Marisa Alia-Novobilski)Embracing opportunity: Additive technology used for manufacturing
                        
                        
                        Dr. Mark Benedict, a senior materials engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, discusses the potential for additive manufacturing of aircraft components in metal. The complex geometry of the rocket nozzle benefits from the use of additive manufacturing due to its complex, specialized design. (U.S. Air Force photo/ Marisa Alia-Novobilski)
                
                Photo Details /
                        Download Hi-Res
        


        Dr. Dan Berrigan points to an embedded antenna on an MQ-9 Reaper part made possible through functional applications of additive manufacturing. Flexible circuits, embedded antennas and sensors are just a few of the potential manufacturing capabilities his team is exploring using additive technology. (U.S. Air Force photo/Marisa Alia-Novobilski)Embracing opportunity: Additive technology used for manufacturing
                        
                        
                        Dr. Dan Berrigan points to an embedded antenna on an MQ-9 Reaper part made possible through functional applications of additive manufacturing. Flexible circuits, embedded antennas and sensors are just a few of the potential manufacturing capabilities his team is exploring using additive technology. (U.S. Air Force photo/Marisa Alia-Novobilski)
                
                Photo Details /
                        Download Hi-Res

Embracing opportunity: Additive technology used for manufacturingPublished Jan. 9, 2017
                    
                    By Marisa Alia-Novobilski
                    
                    
                    Air Force Research Laboratory
            **WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) --**It’s a materials scientist’s dream, but as some experts say, an engineer’s nightmare. For scientists and engineers at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, can be a powerful tool for rapid innovation. 
Ultimately, it’s a new way of looking at manufacturing across the materials spectrum and an area with challenges and opportunities that the Air Force is meticulously exploring.
“Additive manufacturing is a huge opportunity for us,” said Dr. Jonathan Miller, a materials scientist and the additive manufacturing lead for the directorate. “It allows us to manufacture unique form factors; it provides the opportunity to add functionality and capability to structures that already exist. Essentially, it allows us to redefine manufacturing.”
Traditional manufacturing methods developed during the times of the Industrial Revolution, when machines began to overtake the human hand for mass production. Many processes required material to be molded or milled away from a larger form to produce a specific design. 
Additive manufacturing, by contrast, is defined by ASTM International as the process of joining materials together, layer by layer, based on 3-D model data. It increases design possibilities, enhances the speed of innovation and offers an alternative for creating shapes closer to what an engineer might need, with fewer constraints.
“The biggest problem with conventional manufacturing processes is time,” Miller said. “Manufacturing is an iterative process, and you never get a part 'just right’ on the first try. You spend time creating the tools to manufacture a complex part and then spend more time when you realize an initial design needs to be modified. Additive manufacturing offers lower cost tooling and lower lead times. The early mistakes don’t hurt you as badly.” **Early days**
Though additive manufacturing is receiving a lot of industry interest as of late, it is not new to AFRL. Research into this manufacturing capability for the Air Force started at the same time the concept of rapid prototyping emerged in industry back in the 1980s. 
Rapid prototyping was based on the premise that if an engineer had an idea and wanted to make a shape, they could visit a shop and ‘print’ the object, usually out of plastic by a printer.
“The focus at this time was on creating functional prototypes, or objects that resembled a desired part, but the materials lacked the strength for even minimal use,” Miller said. 
Early additive processing used light to chemically react to specific regions in a volume of gel to build rigid, plastic parts. The technology further evolved to include fused filament modeling, wherein fibers of plastic thread were melted and joined together to form a new object. Additional powder-based processes made use of plastic flakes that were melted by a laser into a shape. 
In the early 1990s, scientists learned that similar additive manufacturing processes could be used for generating metal objects. However, the technology at the time resulted in crude, large parts with poor surfaces. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that laser technology matured sufficient to truly move forward in this domain.
“This spurred the additive revolution pursued today by the entire aerospace industry,” Miller said.**Shift to production parts**
While more affordable lasers and metal powder processes were helping scientists make better metal products, the ‘glue gun’ route to additive manufacturing of plastics became much cheaper. Small, inexpensive 3-D printing machines began to turn up in garages and schools, to the amateur engineers delight.
“Collectively, these became a new way of thinking about how to make stuff,” Miller said.
As additive manufacturing thinking evolved from being a way to develop prototypes to a method for actual production, the benefits and applications for the Air Force grew enormously, along with the potential for it to do even more. The manufacturing of customized parts and unique, complex geometric shapes at low production quantities can help maintain an aging aircraft fleet. Custom tools, engine components and lightweight parts can enable better maintenance and aircraft longevity.
“Additive manufacturing can address a multitude of challenges for us, and there is a big pull to implement these processes from the logistics community,” Miller said. “The fleet is aging, and replacement parts for planes built 30 years ago often no longer exist. Rapid production of a small number of hard-to-find parts is extremely valuable.” 
However, the need to develop consistent, quality materials for additive manufacturing still remains a challenge that AFRL researchers are working diligently to address. Engineers need to have full confidence in additive manufactured part alternatives as they implement them as replacements in aging fleets or as system-level enablers in new weapon systems. 
“There are limits as to how the Air Force can use this technology and for what applications it will work best,” said Miller. “That research is the basis of our work here.”**Extension to functional applications**
As additive manufacturing has matured over the past few decades, the field has broadened beyond plastic and metal parts.  
Dr. Dan Berrigan, the additive lead for functional materials at the directorate, is exploring ways to use additive manufacturing processes to embed functionality into structure, such as by adding electronic circuitry or antennas on non-traditional surfaces. As the demand for flexible devices such as activity trackers and performance monitors increases, so does a need to power these sources organically.
“Additive processes enable us to deposit electronic devices in arbitrary shapes or in flexible, soft form factors,” Berrigan said. “We are looking at different ways to make a circuit that can enable them to bend or adhere to new surfaces or geometries, such as on a dome or patch. Essentially, we are looking at ways to add capabilities to surfaces that already exist.”
Conventional circuit fabrication requires the lamination of a series of conductive and insulating layers in a patterned fashion, resulting in a rigid circuit board. The electronic properties for these circuits are known and understood, and engineers are able to ensure that the circuit can conduct as intended based on these known concepts.
For 3-D printed electronics, a conductive material is divided up into millions of small pieces and suspended in a liquid that is then dispensed from a printer, explained Berrigan. After printing, those individual conductive pieces must maintain contact to enable electrons to move through a circuit and create power.   
“The demand here is for low-cost, flexible electronic devices, and these direct write, additive processes give the community design capabilities that we cannot achieve otherwise,” Berrigan said.**Additive challenges and future potential**
Despite years of development and research into additive manufacturing processes, there are a number of implementation challenges that AFRL researchers need to address in order to enable greater Air Force benefit from the technology, both now and in the future. 
“Fundamentally, it comes down to a materials processing problem,” Berrigan said.
The lack of standardized production processes, quality assurance methods, significant material variability and reduced material performance are just some of the factors AFRL researchers need to overcome. Depending on the application, material performance can be related to the strength of a part. For example, the electronic properties of an additive manufactured circuit may be worse than those of ones traditionally manufactured.
“Understanding the safety, reliability and durability of a part is critical for an aircraft. We know this for parts made through other processes, but we don’t know this yet for additive,” Berrigan said.
Another issue centers on basic materials compatibility.
“There are a lot of different interfaces in additive manufacturing, and ensuring that materials adhere to one another or that a part can support a certain stress or withstand a certain temperature—these are all challenges we need to address,” Miller said.
The long-term goal, according to Berrigan, is for additive manufacturing to become a well-understood tool in an engineer’s toolbox, so that unique components can be design-integrated into a system. It’s difficult to go back in a system already built, he said, but additive manufacturing provides the opportunities to build in greater potential at the start.
“The long-term vision is to have functional and structural additive manufacturing to work more cohesively from the start. Rethinking systems-level design to incorporate functionality such as electrical wiring, sensors or antennas is a potential that additive can help us address,” he said. “When you build something by layer, why not introduce channels for sensors, cooling or other functions?”Wright-Patterson AFB 



AFRL 



3-D printing Featured News
        Senior Leader Priorities
                SecAF Kendall visits Bangor ANG Base
                    
                    Vice President Harris congratulates USAFA Class of ‘24
                    
                    Senate confirms Melissa Dalton as next Under Secretary of the Air Force
                    
                    ‘One Team, One Fight’: SecAF visits Keesler AFB
                    
                    SecAF Kendall experiences VISTA of future flight test at Edwards AFBInnovation
                AFSFC reaches final phase of fielding Model Defender gear
                    
                    Around the Air Force: PCS Allowances, Air Task Forces, All-Volunteer Force
                    
                    AFIMSC focuses I-WEPTAC topics on GPC solutions
                    
                    Optimizing AI, Air University hosts Artificial Intelligence Symposium
                    
                    AFIMSC tools deliver data-driven solutions across DAFMAJCOM News
                AFMC to expand AcqDemo workforce
                    
                    AFMC empowers small businesses for Air Force reoptimization
                    
                    Acquisition Instructor Course Class 25A open for nominations
                    
                    Air Guard leaders host 2024 Wing Leader Conference
                    
                    Referral bonuses aim to help fill mission-critical vacancies
 Quick Links
AccessibilityContact UsEqual OpportunityFOIA | Privacy | Section 508Information QualityInspector GeneralJAG Court-Martial DocketLink DisclaimerNo FEAR ActOpen GovernmentOSI Tip LinePlain LanguageQuestionsResilienceRSSSite MapVeterans Crisis LineCareers
Join the Air ForceAir Force BenefitsAir Force CareersAir Force ReserveAir National GuardCivilian ServiceConnect
            Get Social with Us
            
            Official United States Air Force Website
    Hosted by Defense Media Activity - WEB.mil