Steel's high yield strength and tolerance of deflection without damage helped keep the weight low in a 15-piece fabrication to casting conversion. Emerging designs for U.S. Army cannons are required to be smaller and lighter for integration into faster, more agile military land vehicles. Castings are well established in the private sector to reduce weight in cars and trucks while increasing structural performance, but they are underutilized in military applications. High performance specifications, while challenging, are not the primary reason for this underutilization; rather, it is the long lead time typically required to fully comply with the military's dimensional, surface integrity and internal integrity requirements. The deflector tray casting for the Army's XM360 cannon (which is being redeveloped into the XM360E1 for the next Ml Abrams tank upgrade) is a success story illustrating how casting design was integrated with manufacturing engineering to transcend the usual outcomes of delays and cost overruns. The integration of the casting process, casting finishing processes and machining of the rough casting resulted in an approved finished component 110 days from the Army's order date.
展开▼
