Direct Digital Manufacturing May Become Dominant in Defense in Next Two Decades

Shrinking budgets, industrial consolidation, globalization, and specialized weapons systems may require the Defense industrial base to embrace additive manufacturing, sometimes termed direct digital manufacturing.

In an article on the Brookings Institution website, (10/10, Schuette), the author notes the Defense industry’s role in transforming industry, from the first adoption of numerically controlled machine tools (now called CNC), to simulation technologies like NASA’s Nastran for finite element analysis. “Today, we stand poised at another critical turning point for manufacture and design — indeed, at the very intersection of these numerically controlled fabrication and simulation-based design trends.” This new critical turning point is what the author terms Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM.) The article also notes that speed may be DDM’s greatest advantage, something today’s defense procurement process is not known for. Technology developments are becoming more rapid. “The market is starting to take off, growing at a clip of up to 35 percent annually. It is becoming price-competitive with traditional manufacturing techniques, especially ones for typical defense quantities.” The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC.

In related reporting, Digital Manufacturing Report (10/19, Lang) notes that DDM allows manufacturers todesign and test systems and components in a virtual world, then send that digital design to be created. “If a design ever needs to be changed or upgraded, the entire manufacturing line need not be altered, only the design itself.” Organic shapes only possible with DDM could lead to more advanced stealth technology and energy efficiency.

Seeing the importance of additive manufacturing, The Society of Manufacturing Engineers will play an integral role in the new National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII),which was launched by the Obama Administration in August and will serve as a pilot for a much broader national manufacturing initiative, according to an article in Manufacturing Engineering online.

Additive manufacturing could prove ideal for aerospace applications, especially for key components in aircraft engines, according to an article in Aerospace Engineering (8/15, Morey.) However, that article also notes a number of limitations, at least for DDM for metal-based components. In particular, currently metal parts are limited in size by the power and speed of today’s technologies.