U.S. Air Force net-shape manufacturing initiative

Billion-dollar 1980s program to reduce buy-to-fly ratios. Referenced as the funding driver for the buy-to-fly reduction.

So your material cost on your fly-weight: if you pay ten dollars a pound and you machine away ninety percent of it, you're paying a hundred dollars a pound for the material you fly. If you're talking nickel-based superalloys, you could be paying a hundred dollars a pound, multiply that by ten, and your engine cost material is a thousand dollars a pound of actual engine weight. The Air Force used to have 32-to-1 buy-to-fly ratios. Most of those are down below 10 now, because in the 1980s they had a huge program called near-net-shape manufacturing. Rather than making a big round cylinder and machining ninety percent away, they can now forge something so close to the final shape — they spent billions on near-net-shape manufacturing to save many billions.

"The Air Force spent billions of dollars in the '90s on what we call near net shape manufacturing." Frames the lecture's subsequent treatment of near-net-shape continuous casting at Chaparral.

When I talked about the Boeing wings, they start with plate and then machine away all the material they don't want, and the buy-to-fly ratio on that aluminum wing is probably something on the order of 20 to 1. There are some parts in aircraft engines and other parts — I've seen buy-to-fly ratios of 100 to 1. Well, not anymore. The Air Force spent billions of dollars in the '90s on what we call near net shape manufacturing, and we're going to talk about a little bit of near net shape today.

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