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. Officials at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, working with a startup called Machina Labs, have found a robotic AI-driven solution to help reduce costs and shorten the supply chain for replacement parts.
Most metal parts are made by die casting, a technique that has been around since 1849. Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, can create some parts but generally at a higher cost, with varying quality and size limitations.
Machina Labs’s solution, the Robotic Craftsman, applies artificial intelligence to craft metal shapes with human precision and uses robotic arms to fold the metal into place.
The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center has had one of the systems at its depot since November, which has helped reduce the time it takes to get a part by six months and is easier to maintain compared to the die-cast system.
Mehr hopes rapid manufacturing could play a big role in Replicator, the Pentagon’s vision for mass producing low-cost drones. The system’s small size allows for easy transportation and deployment, potentially bringing repair work or drone-making closer to the battlefield. This could increase operational agility and reduce vulnerability in supply lines, particularly in challenging regions like the Pacific.
The goal is to deploy the system into depots, with potential deployment into the battlefield and a more hardened version in the works later in the year.
