America Makes is proud to announce the winners of two recent project calls, the 2022 Rapid Innovation Call (RIC) and the Steel (HY-80) Wire-Arc Additive Heat Treatment (SWAAHT) project call, totaling $1.75M in funding. Winning proposals address the evolving challenges of the domestic supply chain and offer progressive solutions.

“America Makes continues to support the transformation of the additive manufacturing (AM) ecosystem in the United States through innovative, coordinated AM technology development, and education workforce and development,” stated Dr. Brandon Ribic, America Makes Technology Director. “We are thrilled to offer these funding opportunities to our members and partner with industry experts who are driven to advance AM on a national level.”

Funded by America Makes via the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the 2022 RIC focused on supporting the America Makes mission of promoting and accelerating the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective, energy-efficient AM technologies to meet defense and/or commercial needs. Four awardees were announced on December 16, 2022, each presented with the maximum federal funding of $100K. The opportunity centered on addressing the needs of the membership in five topic domains and aligns with various requirements spanning the Design, Process, Materials, Value Chain, and AM Genome swimlanes.

RIC award winners and related topics/projects:

•    Topic 3: Process-Structure-Property Relationships for Directed Energy Deposition (DED)

Winner: Edison Welding Institute (EWI)

Project: Process, Thermal, Structure, Property Model for Ti64 Built with DED-LB

•    Topic 4: Effects of Defects — Production of Higher Criticality Parts Accelerator

Winner: Penn State University (PSU)

Project: Effect of Defects on Ti-6Al-4V Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing Components

•    Topic 5: AM Machine Qualification – Measurement Methods and Characterization

Winner: Colorado School of Mines

Project: Measurement of Process Gas Flow and Delivered Laser Power Impact Toward AM Machine Qualification

•    Topic 5: AM Machine Qualification – Measurement Methods and Characterization

Winner: University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI)

Project: Rapid Print Characterization for Machine Qualification and Equivalency

The projects are expected to be completed in June 2023 with data made available to America Makes members.

Winning proposals of the SWAAHT project call will work to inform and build acquisition and sustainment frameworks that the metal AM community can leverage when producing steel DED and Heat Treatment (HT) practices at scale. Driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), AFRL, and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), America Makes awarded approximately $600K in funding with $395K in matching funds from the winning project teams for a total of $1.350M. Announced on December 23, 2022, proposals were based on metal AM projects that aim to develop an understanding and set of tools (experimental and computational models) specific to the selection of feedstocks, AM build parameters, and post-build heat treatments applied to the DED of high-strength structural steel shapes. MIL-100S-1 DED HY-80 casting alternatives are the targeted use case examined in these studies. Winning teams can advance to phase two of the project and receive a maximum of $750K in (incremental) funding if phase one objectives are met.

SWAAHT award winners and related projects:

•    Project: Development and Transition of HY80 Steel for Qualification to NAVSEA WIRE-DED Tech Pub

Winner: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)

•    Project: Additive Manufacturing Casting Replacement Optimization (AMCRO) – Heat Treating and Chemistry

Winner: Penn State University (PSU)

The SWAAHT projects are expected to be completed in May 2025 with data made available to America Makes members.

"We congratulate the winning project teams and are thrilled to see collaboration between the U.S. Navy, industry, and academia,” stated Dr. Ribic.

For more information, visit www.americamakes.us.