America Makes Announces 2022 Project Awards

America Makes has selected the winners for two recent project calls — the 2022 Rapid Innovation Call (RIC) and the Steel (HY-80) Wire-Arc Additive Heat Treatment (SWAAHT) project call, which total $1.75 million 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,” says 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.”

The RIC Project Call is 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 have been presented with the maximum federal funding of $100,000. 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 swim lanes.

RIC Topics and Award Winners

• Process-Structure-Property Relationships for Directed Energy Deposition (DED)
  Edison Welding Institute for “Process, Thermal, Structure, Property Model for Ti64 Built with DED-LB”
• Effects of Defects — Production of Higher Criticality Parts Accelerator
  Penn State University for “Project: Effect of Defects on Ti-6Al-4V Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing Components”
• AM Machine Qualification – Measurement Methods and Characterization
  Colorado School of Mines for “Measurement of Process Gas Flow and Delivered Laser Power Impact Toward AM Machine Qualification”
• AM Machine Qualification – Measurement Methods and Characterization
  University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) for “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 $600,000 in funding with $395,000 in matching funds from the winning project teams for a total of $1.350 million.

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 Projects:

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute for “Development and Transition of HY80 Steel for Qualification to NAVSEA WIRE-DED Tech Pub”
• Penn State University for “Additive Manufacturing Casting Replacement Optimization (AMCRO) – Heat Treating and Chemistry”

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,” Dr. Ribic says.

To stay informed on current and future America Makes project calls, please visit their website at americamakes.us.

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• Learn about the America Makes roundtable to discuss workforce development with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
• Read about winners of the 2021 America Makes Rapid Innovation Call who received funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory to help fill critical gaps in additive manufacturing technology.
• Check out this recap of MMX 2022 where America Makes’ Members addressed additive manufacturing’s ongoing needs and how industry, government and academia can act together to solve them.