Date: Jan 15, 2008 Source: ARMY SBIR Success Stories (
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The Army has a need for the development of rifled gun barrel liners from advanced ceramic materials because new more powerful propellants are creating greater stress on steel-based gun barrels. To address this need, Materials Processing, Inc. (MPI) designed and tested Power Injection Molding (PIM) for large military components. PIM, a relatively new material shaping process, uses the shaping advantages of plastic injection molding, but expands the application to numerous advanced engineering materials such as metals and alloys, ceramics, intermetallic compounds, and composites. A number of these advanced materials have potential applications both in the military and commercial sector.
An excellent example of PIM advances is MPI's development of ceramic rifled gun barrel tubes. Ceramic gun barrels are extremely attractive compared to their metallic counterpart as they have the potential to increase the barrel life and reduce weight, especially in small caliber systems. Most projectiles coming out of the guns are spin stabilized for aerodynamic flight stability. This spin is imparted by a rifling pattern (lands and grooves) in the inner surface of the gun barrel.
The successes of this project will provide the DoD with a novel environmentally friendly technology for fabricating moderate to large complex near net-shaped components in an economic manner using inexpensive tooling and powder. The fast and environmentally benign debinding process will have tremendous impact in the commercial PIM sector. The use of low/medium pressure injection molding will allow the use of low cost tooling and enable the PIM industry to economically compete with low volume (numbers), complex, and near net-shaped products (both large and small). These advantages will be extensively used by both the defense and commercial sectors.
Phase III Impacts:
More than $750K in private funds has been invested for development of MPI's commercial PIM facility. MPI currently has an established commercial program in the PIM area and is supplying PIM hardened metal parts to aerospace, oil and gas, and consumer goods sectors. Licensing of this innovative technology is expected.
Ceramic gun barrels are extremely attractive compared to their metallic counterpart as they have the potential to increase the barrel life and reduce weight, especially in small caliber systems.
