America Makes Announces 3rd Round of Projects

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, will provide up to $8 million from its third project call for additive manufacturing applied research and development projects.

The nine awarded project teams, which include a team incorporating RTI International Metals,  will provide $11 million in matching cost share for total funding worth $19 million, America Makes announced Monday. Projects are expected to get under way this summer.

“This project call is indicative of the ongoing commitment of America Makes and our membership community to collectively target those focus areas that represent the greatest need, demonstrate the greatest impact, and show the most promise for commercialization of critical additive manufacturing technologies for the advancement of our industry at large,” said Rob Gorham, America Makes director of operations.

America Makes’ third project call, released in February, was focused on five technical additive manufacturing topic areas — design, material, process, value chain and genome — each with subset focus areas. Proposals could address one or more technical topic areas, but had to address all evaluation criteria.

“I was struck by both the total number of submissions and the high quality of the proposals,” said Tim Caffrey, senior consultant at Wohlers Associates Inc. and a proposal committee evaluator. “Specifically, the proposals demonstrated close alignment to America Makes’ mission and to its Technology Roadmap objectives, which is a testament to the maturity of the member proposal teams.”

The nine selected awardees are:

• “Parametric Design of Functional Support Structures for Metal Alloy Feedstocks” — Led by the University of Pittsburgh, in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson, ITAMCO, and the University of Notre Dame, this project will strive to develop parametric designs of functional support structures for metal alloy feedstocks.
• “Multidisciplinary Design Analysis for Seamless AM Design, Analysis, Build, and Redesign Workflows” — Led by Raytheon, in conjunction with General Electric, Altair, ANSYS, Autodesk, NetFabb, the University of Wisconsin, and the Raytheon-University of Massachusetts Lowell Research Institute, this project will focus on multidisciplinary design analysis for seamless additive design, analysis, build, and redesign workflows that help streamline the design process and make it easier for engineers and technicians to develop mass-customizable engineered solutions.

• “Economic Production of Next Generation Orthopedic Materials through Powder Reuse in AM” — Led by the University of Notre Dame, in conjunction with Case Western Reserve University, SCM Metal Products Inc., Zimmer Inc., and DePuy Synthes, this project will address the economic production of next-generation orthopedic materials through powder reuse in additive manufacturing.

• “Integrated Design Tool Development for High Potential AM Applications” — Led by the University of Pittsburgh, in conjunction with ANSYS, United Technologies Research Center, Honeywell, Materials Science Corporation, Aerotech, ExOne, RTI International Metals and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center, this project team aims to develop an integrated design suite with built-in design aides for various advanced manufacturing requirements.

• “A Flexible Adaptive Open Architecture to Enable a Robust Third-Party Ecosystem for Metal Powder Bed Fusion AM Systems” — Led by GE Global Research, in conjunction with GE Aviation’s Additive Development Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and MatterFab Corp., the objective of this project is to develop and demonstrate open architecture control systems for powder bed fusion additive manufacturing.

• “Digital Threading of AM” — Led by Boeing, in conjunction with Aerojet and Raytheon, the digital threading of this project will enable an art-to-part integrated process and tools that reduce cost and cycle time by minimizing material deposition, component finishing processes, and the application of automation between process steps.

• “A Design Guidance System for AM” — Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, in conjunction with Siemens Corporate Technology, MSC, Senvol, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas at Arlington, Lockheed Martin, GKN Aerospace, Woodward, Siemens Energy, and Siemens PLM, this project team aims to address several gaps and deficiencies in the manufacturing design to print workflow with a design guidance system for advanced manufacturing.

• “Cyber-Physical Design and AM of Custom Orthoses” — Led by the University of Michigan, in conjunction with Altair ProductDesign Inc. and Stratasys Ltd., this project will streamline the digital workflow for advanced manufacturing design through the development of advanced manufacturing-specific functionality  while making key improvements in throughput and material offerings, using fused deposition modeling technology to produce customized ankle-foot orthoses.

•  “A Low-cost Industrial Multi3D System for 3D Electronics Manufacturing” — Led by The University of Texas at El Paso, in conjunction with Northrop Grumman, Stratasys Ltd., Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Honeywell, and Draper Laboratory, this project team seeks to deploy the next generation of AM technology into a low-cost industrial multi3D system for 3D electronics manufacturing.

SOURCE: America Makes.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.