Army looks to 3D-print spare parts to speed aging equipment’s return to duty

The Army is disassembling a Blackhawk helicopter and creating 3D images of all 20,000 of its parts. Getty Images

There are approximately 20,000 parts in a Blackhawk UH-60 helicopter, according to an article posted to the Federal News Network website, and the Army is disassembling one of the aircrafts to take 3D images of each part. The purpose of the work is to help determine what role 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing technologies might play in future logistics chains.

“For brand-new weapons systems, the Army said vendors are now delivering digital models of the kind it’s trying to derive for the Blackhawk at the same time they deliver the actual, physical weapons platform,” writes the network’s deputy editor, Jared Serbu. “But those precise 3D representations don’t exist for older systems like the UH-60, so, in essence, they have to be digitally engineered in reverse.”

The helicopter’s manufacturer, Sikorsky, is assisting with the work, which is being performed at Wichita State University and is expected to take a couple of months. When finished, the Army will determine which of the components can be re-created with 3D printing or other advanced technologies.

“We’ll evaluate every one, and not every one is necessarily going to be optimized for advanced additive manufacturing,” said the commander of Army Aviation and Missile Command, Maj. Gen Todd Royar. “But our intent is to literally go through all of our parts, starting with the UH-60, because those are the first ones we’ll have the 3D files for.”Other Army commands charged with making spare parts are exploring advanced manufacturing methods, too, reports Serbu.

The Army Communications-Electronics Command, for example, has evaluated about a third of the items in its inventory of 98,000 separate parts. So far, 237 appear to be candidates for advanced manufacturing.One reason to adopt advanced technologies, according to sources cited in the article, is to cut long lead times for old parts that the original manufacturers no longer produce. Another is to make parts at the “point of need instead of having to wait for replacement parts to move across long and sometimes dangerous logistics chains,” writes Serbu.

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