America Makes awards Boeing Research & Technology $3M; announces project calls
October 20, 2022
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, has announced that Boeing Research and Technology has been awarded a Directed Project Opportunity on the Generation of Additive Material Allowables for Ti6Al4V (GAMAT). Funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Manufacturing and Industrial Base Division and driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), America Makes awarded approximately $3 million in funding, with roughly $0.8 million in matching funds from the awarded project team.
Subject to finalisation, Boeing Research and Technology will work in conjunction with RPMI Innovations, Edison Welding Institute (EWI), Auburn University, ASTM International, and the University of Texas El Paso to deliver on the objectives of the overall effort. In addition, the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) – working concurrently on project 5511JMADD – will coordinate with and support the Boeing project team with the review and documentation of GAAM data generated as part of the GAMAT project.
The objective of the GAMAT Directed Project Opportunity is to overcome the lack of accepted and available design data for use by engineers and designers for the approval of additively manufactured parts. Generating the requisite data and models involves a sizeable investment of resources and time in order to produce statistically significant data, which requires generating test coupons under a controlled process, performing testing, and analysis of the resulting data.
“While there are some existing organisational or company-specific proprietary AM design databases, there is currently very limited industry or government-accepted standard design data for AM in the public domain,” stated John Wilczynski, Executive Director, America Makes. “This data is needed to further shape and support the broader adoption of AM.”
“It’s exciting to see when a project call comes full circle and our membership offers insightful and impactful proposals that ultimately have the ability to advance the dataset of the Additive Manufacturing ecosystem,” he added. “Our project calls are a way for membership to accelerate AM technologies and innovation in the manufacturing sector and beyond.”
America Makes has also announced two additional project calls – opportunities amounting to $1.75 million in funding.
Rapid Innovation Call (RIC) 2022
This focuses on the advancement of Additive Manufacturing technologies which addresses the needs of all members. NCDMM is soliciting competitive proposals supporting the America Makes mission of promoting and accelerating the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective, energy-efficient Additive Manufacturing technologies to meet defence and/or commercial needs. Submitted topics are reviewed and prioritised by the America Makes Roadmap Advisory Group.
The funding source for this call is America Makes via AFRL, with a projected value of $400,000. At least four awards are anticipated, with an associated maximum federal funding of $100,000 available for each award.
The deadline for this project is November 18, 2022, 5PM (EST); awards announcements are anticipated to take place December 16.
Steel (HY-80) Wire-Arc Additive Heat Treatement (SWAAHT) Project Call
The SWAAHT project call – worth $1.35M in federal funding – seeks to inform and build modelling frameworks that the metal Additive Manufacturing community can leverage when looking to optimise ferritic steel Directed Energy Deposition (DED) and post-build HT practices at scale.
NCDMM, AFRL, and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) are seeking responses that outline a metal Additive Manufacturing project that aims to develop an understanding and set of tools (experimental and computational models) specific to the selection of feedstocks, Additive Manufacturing 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 will be the targeted use case examined in this study, with the objective of achieving either optimised DED parameters and industrial scale post-build heat treatment practices for thick and thin sections, or a well-characterised matrix of limitations regarding the heat treatment response of MIL-100S-1 DED builds, including recommendations for feedstock composition modifications/changes and associated post-build heat treatment designs.
Proposers to this project call shall detail an integrated project team (IPT) comprised of relevant subject matter experts from government, industry, and academia. Expertise shall span the areas of welding and physical steel metallurgy, arc welding and Additive Manufacturing, materials (thermodynamic/kinetics) and finite element process modelling, as well as industrial heat treatment.
The deadline for this project is December 2, 2022, by 5 PM (EST); the awards announcement is anticipated to take place on December 23, 2022.
More information about both project calls are available via the America Makes website.
