Last month, Americans just made a plastic panel with a 3D printer on the international space station, trying to provide parts for spacecraft far from the ground; This month, metal parts repaired by the ship's 3D printer have been used on the destroyer of the Chinese navy. At present, the PLA has begun to fully apply the cutting-edge industrial technology of 3D printing to contribute to more convenient equipment support.
According to the jiefangjun Bao reported on January 6, after the new year's day, when a warship of a destroyer detachment of the navy was berthing in the port, the saw tooth of the transmission gear of the winch suddenly broke and could not anchor quickly. At the critical moment, the maintenance personnel of the electromechanical department quickly removed the damaged gear and went into the mobile shelter at the stern to repair the gear. Soon, the damaged gear was repaired.
"This is due to the successful application of additive remanufacturing technology." Ren Aaron, the watchman of the warship electromechanical department, told reporters: "it's like a miniature 'processing workshop', which can quickly repair and manufacture common and even non-standard parts."
Walking into the mobile shelter, the reporter saw that computers, melting and casting equipment, molding machines, aluminum alloy materials, stainless steel powder and other necessary materials for additive remanufacturing were placed in the cabin. Through a large number of three-dimensional data models of spare parts stored in the computer, the forming machine can quickly repair the damaged parts according to the model, and some simple parts can be manufactured on site, which greatly improves the efficiency of wartime equipment support.
"Its principle is similar to that of today's popular 3D printing technology." Academician Xu Bin of the Chinese Academy of Engineering told reporters that at present, the technology has passed the review of the headquarters and entered the equipment support system of the three services.
Previously, chinanews.com reported the deeds of Yang qingxun, an electromechanical veteran of the Chinese Navy's Harbin ship. It mentioned that when the Harbin ship was ordered to carry out an escort mission in the Gulf of Aden, a 25 kg bearing on the warship's diesel engine broke, resulting in the sudden failure of the main engine to start. In order to repair the main engine, Yang qingxun processed a bearing similar to the original according to the drawing. After more than 7 hours of debugging, the engine was restarted, avoiding the danger of the warship.
According to the report of the PLA Daily, the 3D printing system in the warship maintenance shelter is mainly made of aluminum alloy and stainless steel, which can accurately repair and process various metal parts with complex shapes. In the future, the work of repairing and even copying parts such as diesel engine bearings can be completed by the 3D printer on the warship, which greatly reduces the work intensity of repairing parts by the personnel of the electromechanical Department on the warship.
