Standing at the Forefront of a Manufacturing Revolution

We've been talking about 3-D printing and VR design for years. In fact, Lockheed Martin was a trailblazer in that arena -- flying the first 3-D printed parts into deep space with Juno and one on Orion's first flight. And now, as we're printing hundreds of parts every month, we're really seeing the payoff from those investments.

Just a few months ago we qualified our first 3-D printed titanium dome for satellite fuel tanks. The whole tank is huge -- nearly four feet in diameter and almost eight feet tall -- and consists of three parts welded together: two 3-D printed domes that serve as caps, plus a variable-length, traditionally-manufactured titanium cylinder that forms the body. By 3-D printing the domes, we were able to shave off 87% of the manufacturing schedule and reduce the total delivery timeline from two years to just three months.

We self-funded this design and qualification effort as an investment in helping our customers move faster and save costs. And that qualification wasn't easy. We had to invent new ways of testing and assuring for flight worthiness, because this type of technology had never been used before. But now we not only have the technical expertise in creating these mission critical parts, we have a playbook for certifying them.

While I'm incredibly proud of this accomplishment, I'm even more impressed with the teamwork and levels of expertise it required to reach this important milestone. The tank effort actually began after 3-D printing was examined elsewhere in Lockheed Martin. We then carried the idea over to our Space business and began the project with the funding and brainpower of our Advanced Technology Center.

Lockheed Martin was one of the first in the industry to make a dome shape with Sciaky, a leader in industrial 3-D metal printing. We worked closely and collaborated with them to establish the process -- including how to build, how to inspect and how to finish. And as the process matured, our engineers worked with manufacturing to prototype, build, destroy and learn -- growing bigger samples each time.

In the lead-up to producing the qualified tank, our Engineering & Technology organization mapped out the qualification process in conjunction with our Production Operations team. We started small and grew bigger, producing two size variations during the five-year effort -- one 16-inch-diameter and one 35.5-inch-diameter tank -- before eventually building the 46-inch-diameter vessel that was just qualified. In fact, one of the intact 16" tanks was even sent to the White House for President Obama's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation announcement.

Our 3-D printed propulsion tank is a perfect example of how it takes a team -- researchers, scientists, engineers, manufacturers -- to identify and pursue outside-the-box ideas that will help build the next space age. We stepped up from qualifying small brackets and boxes to tackling one of the most difficult and critical parts of a satellite. We can't reach goals without pushing ourselves a little, and this now gives us confidence in building more complex parts. We're also using these lessons to inform new 3-D printing research on faster validation, and we're moving faster by integrating more 3-D printed parts in our structures.

There's no doubt we're at the forefront of a manufacturing revolution. And that's why we're continuing to transform every aspect of our operations and invest aggressively in innovation with a goal of producing satellites twice as fast and at half the cost. The future is hard to predict -- and we know there's still a lot more work to do. But with the right commitment, the right innovation, and the right partnerships, we know it's possible to create it.