America Makes Announces Winners of $2.9M Project Call

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining on Thursday announced the winners of a $2.9 million project call.

The Methods for Demonstrating Operational Qualification project was funded by the Department of the Air Force ManTech Office. 

“Additive manufacturing has great potential to advance the U.S. manufacturing global competitiveness while increasing domestic supply chain resiliency and production efficiency,” a news release from America Makes states. “As a novel technology, successfully advancing its adoption requires considerable testing and data analysis to validate acceptable operational qualifications. This process is a complex and extensive endeavor that includes various tasks [quality assurance] where manufacturing practices and processing data substantiate that workflow outputs are acceptable [quality control].”   

The winners of the project award will demonstrate data gathering and analysis methods to drive industry-wide metal additive manufacturing operations acceptance. 

Here are the award winners and related topic areas:

Project 1: Methods for Demonstrating Operational Qualification

• Team Lead: Wichita State University – National Institute for Aviation Research.
• Project Team: N/A.

Project 2: Accelerate Control and Certification: Enhancing Laser PBF and Electron Beam PBF Operation Quality via Real-time Analytics, Technological Integration, and Experimental Platforms for a Resilient Supply Chain

• Team Lead: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.
• Project Team: Addiguru, Beehive Industries LLC, EOS North America, University of Michigan.

Project 3: Improving LPBF Operational Qualification through Software Automation

• Team Lead: Dyndrite Corp.
• Project Team: ASTM International, Siemens Energy Inc. 

Project teams will report on their progress at the America Makes Technical Review and Exchange and other industry events during the execution phase of the program.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.