What's new
What's new

$1 million grant offer for new forging technique, small business only

jscpm

Titanium
Joined
May 4, 2010
Location
Cambridge, MA
The Defense Logistics Agency is offering up to $1 million in research money for any one, or any small business to: "drastically lower unit costs of forged spare parts support through manufacturing revolutions". Full solicitation is here:

DLA FY12.2 SBIR Solicitation Topics

This offer is only for small businesses (less than 500 employees).

If you win the grant, I want a $10,000 for tipping you off.
 
Assuming i could come up with a way of doing that, i would be frigging insane to tell a government how, far better to drag them over the coals and make some real money supplying parts. I learnt that a long time ago, give a man a net and show him how to catch his own fish and you just lost a customer next week. Real moneys made with running with ideas, not selling them for a fast buck!
 
They actually want to buy parts from you, not just give them the info.
But this is a lot harder than it sounds. For one thing, setting up to forge the old fashioned way is expensive, noisy, dirty, and requires a lot of space, power, and experience. It aint a machine where you just press the button and it runs.
And to do it cheaper and faster is certainly possible, but it requires some serious investment of time and money.
For instance, there are these new direct drive stamping presses from Japan that use variable speed and torque VFD controlled motors to vary the speed and force of the stroke during the stroke, and some of those might be interesting to experiment with in forging techniques- but they are NOT cheap. Similarly, there are probably oven and forge, heat treating and tempering innovations to be made, using computer controlled, modern inert gas forges, or inverter induction heating- again, not available off the shelf, and similar models that are are extremely pricey.
Forging is what you might call a "mature" technology, and while there are certainly improvements out there, we are in the small percentages at this point- the low hanging fruit has mostly been picked.
 








 
Back
Top