The U.S. military spends billions on replacement parts for aircraft each year, with the Air Force requesting $1.5 billion for parts in the next fiscal year alone. Now, officials at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, working with a startup called Machina Labs, say they’ve found a robotic AI-driven solution to those high costs. The new technique could also shorten the supply chain, allowing replacement to happen closer to the front lines.
Most metal parts are made by die casting, based on a technique that’s been around since 1849. It involves forcing molten metal into molds under high pressure, and it requires a human craftsman. Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, can create some parts, but generally at the cost of higher prices, varying quality, and size limitations.
Machina Labs’s solution, dubbed the Robotic Craftsman, applies artificial intelligence to the task of crafting shapes into metal with human precision, and then uses robotic arms to fold the metal into place.
“It’s not that we’re just deploying robots to old technology. It’s a completely new technology developed from scratch,” said Edward Mehr, one of the co-founders of Machina Labs.
The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center has had one of the systems at its depot since November. Shane Groves, a subject matter expert at the center, said the system has helped them take six months off the time it takes to get a part.
And, Groves said, it’s a lot easier to maintain than the die-cast system, which has a lot of difficult-to-replace components.
“Not only are they aging, but the pumps and the valves and bladders that are used are very maintenance prone and require a significant amount of upkeep. The amount of infrastructure needed and the amount of space needed to replicate the same functionality [with the Robotic Craftsman] is much less,” he said. The parts themselves are “three times more affordable.”
Beyond parts repair, Mehr hopes rapid manufacturing could play a big role in Replicator, the Pentagon’s vision for the mass production of tens of thousands of low-cost drones. He said he’s talking to integrators as well as the people in the Defense Department about it.
“The angle we’re taking is around the speed of delivery and manufacturing,” he said. “Let’s say if you’re making 14 different versions of drones, then you have to make 14 different manufacturing lines. And if you use traditional manufacturing techniques, that means we need to have 15, 16 different versions of the production line,” as opposed to one production line that adapts to different needs.
In terms of the military’s future needs, the system’s most important asset may be its small size, with the current version able to fit on the back of a truck. A smaller footprint could not only lower costs, but also allow troops to move repair work—or drone-making—much closer to the battlefield. That’s something the Ukrainians have done with great success, and it allows for much more nimble operations as well as decreasing the vulnerability of supply lines. It could be particularly useful in the Pacific, where parts resupply is fraught with logistical and political challenges.
“The first phase for us is just deployment into the depots. We’re working on potential deployment into the battlefield. We’re working on the next version that’s a little bit more hardened,” Mehr said. The hope is to have a battle-hardened version at some point this year.
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