CastFrag™
technology - a new, innovative,
economical, patent-pending manufacturing technology destined to shape the
future development of fragmentation warheads and penetrating projectiles.
In the
fragmentation munitions industry, it is often desirable for designers/engineers
to incorporate a pattern of shallow notches on the internal
and/or external surfaces of cylindrical steel warhead cases.
The benefits of such a design are widely known
throughout the industry
in that the case, when subjected to the internally mounted explosive charge,
tends to break up in a more uniform manner...thereby yielding a more
consistent fragment size as well as a more controlled and uniform fragment
dispersion.
The typical method
of manufacture of such cases involves the utilization of an automatic
machine that rotates the case while a sharp cutting tool scrapes the notches
into the surface, one at a time, in a manner similar to single point thread
cutting on a lathe.
However, experience
has shown this approach to have many drawbacks.
The tremendous amount of machine time, labor, and wasted material...along
with astronomical tooling costs, all add up to making this method extremely
inefficient and in most cases, cost-prohibitive. As a result, this method is
incapable of satisfying large-scale, mass production needs.
In an attempt to overcome this problem, Miltec
decided to explore a totally different approach altogether.
The precision investment casting process (also known as the lost wax method)
offers many unique benefits which are unattainable through conventional
metal cutting methods. The very nature of casting itself offers dramatically
reduced material waste, and dramatically reduced or even eliminated
secondary machining operations. The notch patterns shown in the right column
were cast "to net", requiring no additional machining operations.
With this new technology, warhead designs that
were once cost-prohibitive or impossible to manufacture, are now economical
and practical.
