The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently received a national manufacturing award for developing a method to build canopies for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II that could save the military $125 million over the life of the programme.
ONR spearheaded the effort to automate a thermoforming process used to create the F-35 canopy – the transparent portion of the cockpit enclosure – that will be applied to at least 2,000 of the aircraft. The new process also makes the manufacturing work safer, ONR says.
Officials from ONR’s Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program accepted the Department of Defense’s Joint Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award at the Defense Manufacturing Conference in San Antonio.
“This award confirms our commitment to developing the most efficient and cost-effective ways to manufacture some of the most critical hardware our Sailors and Marines use,” John Carney, director of ONR’s ManTech programme, says in a prepared statement.
The existing canopy manufacturing process requires loading an acrylic shell into a forming tool, which then is slid into a 93.3°C (200°F) oven. The canopy forms within the mold over six days, during which “workers regularly enter the oven to makes observations and manually adjust positioning clamps to control the forming process”, ONR says.
ONR’s new method includes cameras and clamps that adjust automatically to maintain a uniform canopy shape, thus relieving workers from having to enter the oven. The process also takes only two to three days, ONR says.
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