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This thing is huge, you could park a bus in here!
Bill come on, we have a show to do.
Hi I'm Bill Hubscher... and I'm Lori Meggs,
and welcome to focus on Marshall. On today's
episode, we're standing outside a gigantic
oven here at the Marshall Center and we are
going to show you what's baked in here. But
first we are going to take you to two brand
new facilities here at Marshall that are
going to help in the development in future
spacecraft.
Sound Effect
One of the greatest things about this job
is how you can learn something new everyday.
For example, I always thought that the
External tank was built entirely down at the
Michoud facility in New Orleans. Not true!
Nose cones are built right here at Marshall.
Richard Welch is a supervisor at the non-
metallic processing area. Richard first of
all what is this material we're seeing here?
It is part of the nose cone right? The
material is a graphite fiber, woven into a
fabric with a a phenolic resin impregnated
into that fabric. In fact I have a small
piece here of the material; it's very high
strength,very flexible. It needs to be
flexible so that we can put it into the
nose cone form it around some of the corners
and cavities that are in the nose cone.
The material... the fiber is actually made
in Tennessee,its taken to South Carolina and
woven into a fabric,and then shipped to
California. The resin is made in New York
and that's shipped to California to pre-
impregnate this material and then that
material is shipped here to Marshall for us
to layup into the nose cone. It is really a
nationwide effort. So walk us through the
steps, what are these guys doing right here?
These guys are actually doing the cut out
of each ply. We do little pie shapes so
it fits into the cone itself. We have done
many years of development for this, to
make sure we have the ply orientation and
cuts right. They have to be carefull of
the ply orientation. To make a better strength
of the cone itself we lay some up at zero
degrees, some up at 45 degrees,some at minus
45 degrees and some at 90 degrees. We have a
plan that the technicians ans engineers follow,
step by step to make that happen. So it is
all in the layering? Yes. How much of this
material do you use just to make this one nose
cone? We actually use almost 300 feet, almost
the length of a football field to manufacture.
We have 18 plies in the main body of the cone
and then there is 6 extra plies in the very
tip of the cone to make sure there is extra
strength there for when they mount the spike
on in production. Alright Richard, so what
happens after we cut the pieces out here? When
we get done doing the cutouts of the plies here
of the pie shapes we actually take it to the
cone; we'll go over and look; and lay each ply
up into the cone. This is actually under vacuum
right now and between each ply we have to put
it under vacuum. When we take it out of vacuum
we lay this over and the operators come in here
and do the layup. From there it goes into the next
room, behind these doors here, into the autoclave
where its pressure and held under vacuum and
heated to 300 degrees to actually cure out the
resin that's in the pre-impregnated material.
I know there's a few more steps after this and
that's where Lori comes in.
Sound Effect.
I'm here with Jon Sharpe, and he is the senior
manager for Lockheed Martin for the external
tank nose cone project here at Marshall and
Jon we've seen it cut and cured now what happens?
After cure it is taken into a large oven that is
also here in the National Center for Advanced
Manufacturing, and there its post cured. That
basically takes it up to a higher glass transition
which makes it more thermally stable. Then its
brought into this room where its machined to be
able to interface with the external tank down at
Michoud Assembly Facility down in New Orleans.
So what you see in this room is a series of
drilling and machining tools that the technicians
and engineers use to put it into final form and
to put to mount the bracets onto the base of the
unit so it interfaces with the external tank in
final assembly in New Orleans. So Jon I understand
that each one has a name to. Yeah they do, the
production crew actually gives a nickname to each
of the units. Through the life of the program
we'll have built 54 of these units. So each one
has a name, this particular one, is unit 52, is
named Betsy. Any room for a Lori anywhere? Hey
we'll see what we can do. Alright thanks for
showing us around Jon.
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We're in building 4705 at the Marshall Space
Flight Center, to talk to Nadra Hatchett, she's
a mechanical engineer here at Marshall. Nadra,
first of all tell us what you do here? OK, I work
for the mechanical fabrication branch, as a task
lead for the machining development task. OK, today
we are here because of a huge project you've been
a part of. The paint not even dry in this new
facility, just look at this, a brand new machining
tool, this thing is immense. What can you tell us
about it? What you're looking at is a high
tolerance, high speed machining tool with 7 axis
and its just awesome. Now can you tell me what
machining means? what will happen when we put
something in there to be machined? Well it is a
milling machine, a 7 axis milling machine, so
what its gonna do is take off small amounts of
metallic or non-metallic material, but it will do
it at a high speed. That's what makes it so special.
So essentially something is being sculpted there.
Exactly. What do you mean when you say 7 axis?
Oh 7 axis, this machine has 7 axis which means that
it can move in 7 different directions, its the
motion. you have... if you look at the red
component there, that's the spindle,there's five
axis on the spindle. You have the rotary table,
right here the turntable, there's one axis there.
Then you have the head stock and the tail stock,
which has the indexers,there's is one axis there.
So if you count them all up you have 7 axis.
That's impressive, what kind of things can we expect
to see on here? Oh yeah, we're going to fabricate
dome shaped components, starting with the common
bulkhead demonstration article. We're capable of
putting cylindrical components between the trunions
for cylindrical machining. so it can be turned in
many different ways. its basically like a rotisserie.
If you think about it. Wow, a giant rotisserie that
could end up in space. OK, so thanks very much, we
look forward seeing the first element you put on
there. Thank you.
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Bill it would be so cool to have my name on a nose
cone. I agree but you know what would be even cooler?
The size of the cupcake you could bake in this thing.
Always thinking with his stomach. Find out where
we turn up next as we focus on Marshall.
Sound efect and then music.