America Makes announces awardees of funding for two innovation calls
March 24, 2021
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, has announced five awardees of two recent Rapid Innovation Calls (RICs) worth $285,000 in funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Manufacturing, and Industrial Base Technology Division with $85,500 in matching funds from awarded project teams for total funding worth of $370,500.
The RICs aim to optimise materials data to foster analytics and advance Additive Manufacturing qualification and certification (Q&C).
“Our new RIC process elicited an overwhelming level of response and support from the America Makes membership community with impactful and well-thought-out proposals to address the critical needs of the supply chain,” stated Brandon D Ribic, PhD, America Makes Technology Director. “It is exciting to see how these efforts will serve as an important piece of underpinning knowledge that will significantly enhance the supply chain’s efforts to develop qualification and certification standards of AM materials, processes, and products.”
Subject to the finalisation of all contractual details and requirements, America Makes selected the following project teams as the RIC awardees in the following three topic domains:
Searchable AM Materials Database
- Led by 3Degrees, LLC, in collaboration with Senvol, Northrop Grumman Corporation, EOS, and Deloitte, this project team seeks to develop a searchable and scalable database built using 3Degrees’ TRACEam software. Specifically designed to collate AM data according to the workflows of the Additive Manufacturing process, the TRACEam software provides a comprehensive materials data management system for key production and AM technical data to improve data management and analytics of America Makes projects. The project team was awarded $50,000 in AFRL funding with a $42,500 cost-share for total funding of $92,5000.
- Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) will leverage data management tools developed by SwRI and the open-source data infrastructure of Materials Data Curation System (MDCS) from the Material Genome Initiative (MGI) Program led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create a searchable and extendable XML-based database to systematically archive various types of data from America Makes projects. SwRI was awarded $50,000 in AFRL total funding.
Characterisation of Metal AM Process Surface Features
- The Ohio State University (OSU) will investigate the capability of multiple in-process monitoring systems to characterise AM part surfaces by identifying gaps and highlighting which methods are best suited to quantify AM part surface feature characteristics. The goal of the project is to expand the industry understanding of metal AM and establish a quantitative data set to refine best practices, which will subsequently contribute to the development of qualification and certification (Q&C) standards. OSU was awarded $55,000 in AFRL funding.
Development of Test Artifacts for the Characterisation of AM In-situ Process Monitoring Systems
- Led by Applied Optimization, Inc., in collaboration with Penn State University, this project team will use AM process simulations to develop test artifacts to provide a host of metrics for process monitoring systems to support the qualification and certification efforts of AM parts. The project goal is to increase AM fabrication and AM parts quality in real-time instead of quality analysis after fabrication. The project team was awarded $65,000 in AFRL funding with a $17,000 cost-share for total funding of $82,000.
- Baker Hughes Company will pursue a holistic approach to in-situ process monitoring system characterisation by probing the system response under a comprehensive set of strategically designed anomalous conditions beyond geometric features to assist in defect detection. Baker Hughes was awarded $65,000 in AFRL funding with a $26,000 cost share for total funding of $91,000.
