UPGRADE TO DESTRUCTION
any warped rockets that may have leaked inside their shipping and firing tubes would spread their chemical agent with the first cut, instead of keeping it neatly confined. An alternative method was developed by holding the rocket assem- bly fixed vertically and making a rotating horizontal cut, ensuring that any leaking chemical agent would gather in a contain- ment device. Making these horizontal cuts also added more precision and accuracy, with the robots able to make cuts as small as one thousandth of an inch consistently, Ankrom said.
DIRTY WORK
These robots in the Munitions Demilitarization Building at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent- Destruction Pilot Plant transfer a piece of a test M55 rocket shipping and firing tube to place it onto a conveyor for packaging as waste.
Should a leaking rocket be encountered following the shipping and firing tube cut, a new tilting reject station is used to take the leaking rocket and place it into an overpack container. Te new design creates yet another efficiency and safety improve- ment, as the old system required workers to manually perform the overpack opera- tion. Te new technology also identifies whether the cut location of the rockets has warped and adjusts the system’s hydraulics to compensate and keeps the same pressure around the rocket while cutting.
Ankrom added that the new rocket- cutting robots also require far
less
maintenance than the earlier designs. “Tat keeps people out of the room, which is always safer.”
With the vertical rocket cutting design complete, the team turned to developing a system to help identify leaking rockets long before the robots make their first cut.
ROBOTS AT THE READY
Robots stand ready in the Munitions Demilitarization Building to load drained rocket warhead canisters into custom packaging skids for transport to temporary storage before their destruction in one of the static detonation chamber units at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant.
STOP THE LEAKS “If we can avoid the leakers before they ever go to the vertical rocket cutting machine, then we’re never having down- time,” said Ankrom, noting that less downtime is essential to the goal of completing disposal of more than 70,000 rockets by late 2023.
42 Army AL&T Magazine Spring 2022
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