Video: 5" Diameter Navy Artillery Rounds Made Through Robot DED Instead of Forging

Forging lead times present an obstacle the U.S. Navy wishes to overcome in obtaining the projectile housings for artillery rounds, says Big Metal Additive. The company has developed and proven out a process using directed energy deposition (DED) via a robot to make these housings through additive manufacturing. One robot and one lathe can produce housings at the rate of six per day, and the company is getting ready for an eventual AM factory that will make these rounds by the hundreds per day. I learned more about this work during a visit to Big Metal Additive in Denver, Colorado.

Mentioned in the video: An aircraft structure for the U.S. Air Force is an application of DED for challenging geometry
How scaling production capacity required Big Metal Additive to not only develop its DED capability, but also establish a quality system

Transcript

Additive manufacturing is good for two things challenging geometries and challenging schedules. Or that's what Big Metal Additive says. This part right here is an example of challenging schedules. I am at Big Metal Additive’s production facility in Denver, Colorado. They do directed energy deposition additive manufacturing, wire arc metal deposition process. They do it on gantry machine tools. They do it on robots. And it is how this projectile body was made. The U.S. Navy needs five inch artillery rounds like this. They need lots of them. They need them fast. So fast that they can't afford the lead times that the conventional process forging would require. So this artillery body, this was made through directed energy deposition instead. It was 3D printed using a robot. Then it was machined on a lathe and this process is ready for production. One robot plus one lathe could produce six of these per day. That means a factory with 100 robots and 100 lathes would be good for 600 of these per day. Something else, additive manufacturing takes another feature of this and makes it very easy. It’s made of steel, but it requires this copper band. It’s simulated here with a 3D printed plastic piece, but it requires a band of copper. Today, the forging is chilled, made super cold so that it shrinks a little bit and the copper band is heated, so it grows a little bit. All that just to slide this on and get it to fit. With additive manufacturing, way simpler than that. Print some of the part, stop for a moment, place the copper piece on by hand and then keep going.