America Makes announces two AM projects worth $14.5M
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have announced the two project calls, worth a total of $14.5 million.
Delta Qual 2.0
Delta Qual 2.0 project call worth $9 million in funding. The project aims to address key qualification challenges in Additive Manufacturing as relates to the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) by streamlining testing requirements, strengthening machine installation standards, and increasing flexibility for process parameters.
“Modernising qualification for advanced manufacturing is essential to maintaining our defense readiness,” said John Martin, Additive Manufacturing Research Director at America Makes. “This project lays the groundwork for a more agile, trusted, and scalable manufacturing ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver mission-critical parts faster and with greater confidence for decades to come.”
Proposed efforts are expected to deliver actionable insights that reduce technical and industrial risk while enabling realistic transition pathways. Collectively, the outcomes are intended to provide mutual value to the US Department of Defense and Organic Industrial Base (OIB).
The Delta Qual 2.0 project call consists of three topic areas:
- Topic 1: Quantitative Measurement-Based Installation Qualification Establish enhanced measurement, calibration, and maintenance procedures for Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) subsystems to create a robust machine performance baseline that enables event-based requalification with little to no mechanical testing.
- Topic 2: Bracketed Qualification for [PBF-LB] Establish a qualification framework with defined process bounds, allowing parameter variation within those limits without requiring requalification, enabling advanced, variable toolpath strategies.
- Topic 3: Red Team Develop a Red Team of industry, academia, and government subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders to advise the teams funded under Topics 1 and 2 and facilitate the transition of the work performed under those areas into industry.
Submission date is June 2, 2026. Decisions are anticipated on July 6. More information on the Delta Qual 2.0 is available here.
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GOTHAAM
The second project call, Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM), is worth $5.5 million in funding and focuses on developing material allowables for a high-strength, 7075-T73-equivalent aluminium alloy across three classes of PBF-LB Additive Manufacturing machines, enabling scalable production on small, medium, and large-format machines.
By delivering a corrosion-resistant, aerospace-grade alloy with broad defence and commercial applications, the effort is positioned to generate a strong return on investment for original equipment manufacturers and OIB as it transitions into qualified production.
This project builds on previous efforts, including Joint Metal Additive Database Definition (JMADD) and Generation of Additive Material Allowables for Ti-6Al-4V (GAMAT), by targeting the qualification of a high-strength, 7075-equivalent aluminium alloy for AM. Using large-format, multi-laser PBF-LB AM machines, the effort aims to deliver robust material data supporting durable, corrosion-resistant components for critical defence applications.
A key priority of the project is characterising environmental durability, intergranular corrosion resistance, stress-corrosion cracking behaviour, and fatigue-crack growth performance, to ensure the alloy can support long-life, high-strength structural applications. Establishing these data-driven attributes will enable future assessments of fracture toughness and damage tolerance, supporting the transition of a matured PBF-LB aluminium alloy into critical defence platforms.
“Qualifying advanced AM materials like this alloy directly strengthens the Defence Industrial Base,” explained Martin. “By delivering validated data and maturing LPBF capability, we’re giving US manufacturers what they need to produce reliable components for critical defence systems.”
The GOTHAAM project consists of two phases:
- Phase 0 Establish baseline feedstock, process, and material requirements to enable qualification.
- Phase 1 Based on the findings of Phase 0, generate MMPDS-compliant material allowables by testing the Phase 0 process across small, medium, and large multi-laser PBF-LB Additive Manufacturing machines to confirm scalable performance and machine-to-machine equivalency for defence use.
Submission date is June 2, 2026. Decisions are anticipated on July 6. More information on GOTHAAM is available here.
