Heater, the bright green, bottom-heavy mascot of the Dayton Dragons, is notably earthbound. That said, he does reside in Dayton, Ohio, where man learned to fly - and he is to all appearances a dragon. Dragons fly. Heater walks, skips, jumps and dances, but Heater doesn’t fly.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and several ingenious young engineers are working to change all that. The inspiration was sparked by a 2019 mandate from then-Assistant Secretary of the US Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Dr. Will Roper. AFRL and the Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office were tasked with conducting a series of additive manufacturing innovation challenges, seen by the Pentagon as key to continued Air Force dominance.
“Advanced manufacturing, scaled across the entire Air Force and Space Force, will transform sustainment,” then-Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said at the time.
Dr. Roper was no less enthusiastic: “So much of what we do is in the realm of sustainment,” he added. “In fact, it’s 70 percent in terms of budget of what the Air Force and now Space Force do for a living — 70 percent! That is a lion’s share, but it really is the part of the iceberg that’s below the surface of the water.”
Advanced manufacturing is a focus for both the military and the country. In California, it is estimated that there are 34,590 new job opportunities each year, with only 5,868 qualified graduates to fill them. Introducing students to the field will reap long- and far-reaching benefits.
WBI and AFRL organized a virtual advanced manufacturing challenge event, held in October 2020. This provided a forum for advanced manufacturing training, exposure opportunities for industry, seminars and panels from industry and government advanced manufacturing leaders, and displayed the results of the series of challenge events. Teaming with the FIRST Robotics Competition also served to contribute to AFRL’s requirement to assist in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. The successful completion of that challenge gave WBI, AFRL and FIRST Robotics the experience and enthusiasm that propelled them into a follow-on challenge with leftover funding from the first.
Again, WBI and AFRL partnered with FIRST Robotics Competition on a challenge open to all students in the state of Ohio. The objective: Design, fabricate and demonstrate an 11-pound Heater-shaped shell attached to an off-the-shelf hexacopter able to fly the happy mascot around Day Air Ballpark, home of the Dragons, a minor-league affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds.
Eighteen student teams from around the state signed up to participate in the “pitch” – the first phase of the challenge. The pitch required the teams to present their design ideas to a panel of prototyping and engineering experts. Each team was given $500 for their design pitch: selected teams were awarded $5,000 to use toward materials and tools necessary to take their plans from ideas to reality.
Of the 10 teams that expressed initial interest, just three made it to pitch day with a presentable design. It’s worth noting that though the challenge was open to students across the state, the three teams with suitable designs were all from southwest Ohio, home to some famous flying brothers named Wright.
All three teams were given the green light and $5,000: Respawn Robotics from Butler Tech in Hamilton; Lakota Robotics, a community-based team comprising several school districts; and Chaminade-Julienne Catholic High School’s Eagles Robotics of Dayton. Judges include Mr. Adam Hicks and Dr. Dennis Butcher from AFRL, Tom Nichols, Media Director and broadcaster for the Dragons, and Mike DiGiovanna, an expert in Solidworks, a computer-aided engineering and design program.
“This is a testament to the work the teams here have done,” said Brad Fairfax, WBI’s Innovation Projects Manager and one of the challenge architects. “To have a path to fabrication is already a really impressive feat. A lot of teams just couldn’t get there, just couldn’t get a design to close.”
Chengkun Liu, an engineer overseeing the C-J team, likes the “outside the box” thinking that must be applied to the challenge. “It’s taking (the students) outside the realm of their usual robotics. It’s a lot of fun.”
Sources:
https://readysetcareer.org/program/advanced-manufacturing/
https://www.iste.org/explore/computer-science/12-competitions-get-your-students-fired-about-stem