Appeared in Exemplar, the Wayne State University Engineering alumni magazine, 2003
When a military vehicle breaks down on the battlefield, soldiers sometimes wait four days for the Army to track down and ship a new part from its inventory -- if the part still exists.
But soon, soldiers will be able to fabricate replacement parts on the spot through the use of a Mobile Parts Hospital (MPH), a Department of Defense initiative College of Engineering students helped develop through the Greenfield Coalition at Focus: HOPE.
Mobile Parts Hospital mini-manufacturing centers can reproduce or repair broken mechanical components for military vehicles, including trunks, tanks and helicopters -- in a matter of hours. The project has been under development since 1999 through the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command's National Automotive Center (NAC). Plans are to develop three to four units that would be battle ready by 2007, says Coryne Forest, a project manager at NAC.
The project uses the same thinking behind Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. “M.A.S.H. units brought surgeons in close to the front lines. This is the same idea,” said Donald Falkenburg, director of the Greenfield Coalition.
The MPH comes in the form of 20-foot containers are packed with machinery, computers and satellite communications technology. The 27,000-pound containers are designed for transport by C-130 military aircraft, so the it can be deployed to remote locations. The containers are not armored, however, so they would likely be placed about 30 miles from the front lines, says Todd Richman, the MPH project manager at NAC.
Set-up takes about an hour. The units expand two feet to allow a technician to maneuver. Inside the module, the operator retrieves part information in the form of computer aided design via satellite from a growing database of more than 90,000 parts. Then, machines either cut and shape solid part stock to fit the digital mold or produce the part layer by layer by fusing metal powder in a process known as directed metal disposition.
If part data is unavailable, or, in the event of a communications failure, the MPH uses a 3-D laser scanner to glean geometric data and "reverse engineer" and build the part. Although the replacement parts are not the same quality as the original equipment manufacturers', they do the job, Forest says.
"The goal is to keep vehicles operating as long as possible in the field and keep the fighting forces fighting as long as they can," says Bruce O'Neill, program manager at Focus: HOPE’s Center for Advanced Technologies.
At the Center for Advanced Technologies, six manufacturing engineering degree candidates from the College of Engineering, the University of Detroit-Mercy and Lawrence Technological Institute had their hands in various elements of the project. The students were involved from a programmatic perspective, O'Neill says. They coordinated the equipment selection process, reviewed design specifications proposed by vendors, and ensured that those would fulfill the requirement.
Andre Reynolds, who received his bachelor's degree in Engineering Technology from Wayne State in 2001, helped develop the prototype 53-foot MPH demonstration trailer. The trailer is equipped with a vertical machining center, selective laser sintering system and communications center, which has video conferencing, satellite and cell phone data transfer capabilities.
"It was a very interesting project," Reynolds says. "It was a major learning curve." Reynolds spent about nine months working on the MPH project -- the longest of any of the candidates. He is now working for Ford Motor Company as a production supervisor.
The demo trailer is currently on the road touring the country for testing, trade shows and conferences.
It is not yet clear who will run the units -- whether it will be a soldier or Department of Defense civilian employee, Richman says. However, operators can learn to use the machinery even if they don't have an engineering background. Qualified personnel can coach operators via satellite from remote communications command centers, O’Neill said.
Mobile Parts Hospitals will also be linked to three Agile Manufacturing Centers located strategically throughout the United States. Those cells can manufacture parts that are too big to be produced in MPH modules or those not stored in the inventory database. Obsolete parts the government cannot get elsewhere can also be produced. The parts would then be transported to the point of need.
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