Dyess civilian hits jackpot

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Robert Hicks
  • 7th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
DYESS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  A Team Dyess member here hit the lotto when his idea landed him a large sum of money from the Innovative Development through Employee Awareness Program, which is an incentive program that promotes process improvement and resource savings through ideas submitted by military and civilian employees.

Ron Hunter from the 7th Maintenance Group was awarded $10,000 after coming up with a solution to fix the high-failure rate of the air recirculation cooling loop blower assemblies on the B-1 Bomber, which is used to cool the heat exchangers.

Hunter wrote the procedures for inspection and cleaning the heat exchangers once they are removed from the aircraft.

"Air could not flow freely through the heat exchangers due to clogged cooling fins loaded with dirt and/or congealed hydraulic fluid," Hunter said. "This resulted in driving the operating temperatures of the blower assemblies up and subsequent failure of the motors or valves on the blower assembly." "The exchange cost for the blowers was approximately $68,000 each."

This idea improves the B-1s and its mission not only at home station, but overseas as well.

"We have increased the service life of the blowers and cooling efficiency of the heat exchangers, which have contributed to more time between failures of downstream line replaceable units, and resulted in higher mission capable rates long term," Hunter said.

Hunter's idea is estimated to save the 7th Bomb Wing and Air Force more than $750,000 annually.

The award winning idea was based on cleaning typical air conditioning style cooling coils to ensure free air flow.

"When we first started taking a look at the cause of equipment over heating resulting in equipment failures from failed blowers we noticed the cooling fins in the ARL used forced air to cool the aircraft cooling fluid called polyalphaolefin," Hunter said.

Any airmen can submit ideas through the IDEA program. If tangible savings or benefits are determined, the airman receives a monetary award based on how much the Air Force would save from the first operational year of the idea.