Rheinmetall’s Mobile Smart Factory enables mobile production of spare parts for military vehicles
July 4, 2023
Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH, an OEM for tactical and logistic tracked and wheeled vehicles headquartered in Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, Germany, has announced a new solution for the mobile production of spare parts for military vehicles. At a recent event organised by the European Defence Agency, the company presented its Mobile Smart Factory (MSF), a shipping container-based setup delivering both metal Additive Manufacturing and postprocessing capabilities.
The MSF consists of two 6 m mobile shipping containers, one serving as an office and the other for production. The office container houses a workstation and storage space, as well as a polymer AM machine and handheld scanner for quality control. The production container is equipped with a Metrom P700, a 6-axis hybrid machine combining Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) with an integrated CNC milling facility. This enables on-site finishing and postprocessing, giving Battle Damage Repair personnel additional options for repairing and overhaul.
The machine can reportedly produce components with a maximum size of 700 mm in diameter and 450 mm in height, with a metal deposition rate of up to 600 cm3/h.
The MSF is fully integrated into Rheinmetall’s IRIS (Integrated Rheinmetall Information System) digital ecosystem. The cloud-enabled IRISplatform enables the operation of the IRISwork and IRISfleet software applications with the MSF, said to meet IT security standards up to NATO Restricted levels. IRISwork provides operators and maintenance personnel with access to technical documentation and spare parts catalogues, while IRISfleet is a fleet management tool that documents the installation of a specific additively manufactured part on a specific vehicle.
IRIS technology also includes access to remote support from industry, engineers, quality assurance, etc.
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