America Makes Announces Winners of $850K Open Project Call

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining on Tuesday announced the winners of an $850,000 open project call.

The AM Process Pre-Qualification project is funded by the Department of the Air Force ManTech Office.

Additive manufacturing technologies offer a range of benefits, including unique product geometries, fewer tooling requirements and relatively shorter lead times in comparison to other manufacturing methods, a news release from America Makes states. The industrialization of additive manufacturing represents an opportunity to convert demonstrated manufacturing capability into capable manufacturing capacity.

In alignment with the America Makes Additive Manufacturing Technology Roadmap, awardees are leading the charge to identify the current, emerging and future state of additive manufacturing process qualification, prioritizing additive manufacturing machine qualification to quantitatively validate acceptable additive manufacturing operations, the release states.

Here are the award winners and related topic areas:

Project 1: AM Process Pre-Qualification

• Team lead: Applied Optimization Inc.
• Project team: ASTM International, Lockheed Martin Corp.

Project 2: Sensor-Based Approaches to LPBF Machine Pre-Qualification

• Team lead: University of Dayton Research Institute.
• Project team: Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., The Ohio State University Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions LLC.

Project 3: Build Area Qualification through Statistical Modeling of Melt Pool and Defect Distribution

• Team lead: Sentient Science.
• Project team: Purdue University.

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.