The U.S. Air Force has awarded EXPANSIA a multi-million dollar contract to perform rapid comparative analysis of various aircraft platforms for the force’s Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO).
The RSO is responsible for leading the program. By scaling technology and innovative solutions, the RSO advances and modernizes the United States Air Force’s sustainment operations through agile acquisition processes and leads the path to scale and operationalizing AM throughout the Air Force.
To scale Additive Manufacturing (AM) applications to aircraft platforms such as the KC-135, B-52, B-1, and E-3, EXPANSIA will conduct a rapid comparison analysis to assess AM part viability. In addition, the EXPANSIA team will develop use cases to characterize AM part families for more efficient AM adoption at scale for polymer and metal printed parts. Through this effort, innovative solutions will be provided to aid in developing an organic additive manufacturing capability based on commercial airworthiness-certified printing processes, methods, and procedures, allowing for the full use of material processing information and repeatability. As a result, a blueprint for Air Force part assessment will be created, leading to AM to be applied at scale in order to address parts supply shortfalls fleetwide.
Adam “AJ” Jarnagin, EXPANIA’s CEO, stated: “EXPANSIA is humbled and honored to continue to help USAF RSO accelerate the mission of identifying operational efficiencies through digital transformation. Our focus is on applying engineering and integration excellence to the next generation of additive manufacturing that holds tremendous promise for the Air Force’s path to scaling AM, increasing cost savings, and most importantly, doubling down on fleet readiness.”
The recent win for EXPANSIA follows the successful full and open competition leading to their partnership with the RSO on developing the AGORA Digital Thread prototype for additive manufacturing. AGORA (Always Guaranteeing Operationally Ready Aircraft) is a prototype that consolidates and optimizes disparate Supply Chain Management systems and legacy databases previously with innovative Product Lifecycle Management tools and workflows that EXPANSIA is currently developing, integrating, testing, and evaluating. AGORA simplifies processes and reduces supply chain delays by enabling real-time collaboration between government agencies and Defense Industry Base (DIB) partners.
Find out more about EXPANSIA at expansiagroup.com.
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