America Makes names winners of $1.1M Allied AM Interoperability project call
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have announced the winners of a recent project call funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD(R&E)), totalling $1.1 million.
The project call, Allied Additive Manufacturing Interoperability (AAMI) Program, aims to establish AM equivalency and interoperability between the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and United Kingdom (UK) Ministry of Defence (MoD) supply chains, focusing on Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) of critical parts. The project will also identify barriers to allied interoperability and advance international qualification approaches.
The award winners are as follows:
Topic: Demonstrating Additive Manufacturing (AM) Equivalency and Interoperability for Defense Sustainment and Supply Chain Resilience
- (Awardee 1) Team Lead: Lockheed Martin
- Project Team: ASTM International, Additive Manufacturing Solutions, Ltd.
- (Awardee 2) Team Lead: Eaton Corporation
- Project Team: EOS North America, Materials Solutions (A Siemens Energy Business), 3Degrees
AM is increasingly important to US manufacturing, enabling faster lead times, mass customisation, lower energy use, complex geometries, and on-demand production for both new and legacy systems. Scaling AM to meet demand requires sufficiently capable machines, driving the need for strong domestic and international manufacturing partnerships. Over the past few years, regional and distributed supply chain approaches have gained momentum. Executing AM at scale requires a knowledge of supply chain capacity, materials, manufacturing technologies, design intent, specifications, and standards. As a result, qualifying AM processes and parts remain a major technoeconomic hurdle.
The US and UK face shared challenges in adopting AM, including process qualification and certification, intellectual property rights, secure data transmission, and supply chain integration. The goal of this project, in alignment with the UK Advanced Manufacturing Strategy and the US Regional Sustainment Framework (RSF), is to overcome these hurdles and build a resilient and globally connected defence industrial base adaptable to complex logistical demands.
“Defence sustainment still relies on legacy materials and processes that fall short of today’s operational demands. This effort enables teams to propose and demonstrate a qualification framework for metal Additive Manufacturing suppliers in both the US and the UK, ensuring consistent parts across allied nations,” said Ben DiMarco, Technology Transition Director at America Makes. “We’re honoured to work with leading global experts to prove AM equivalency and interoperability. By advancing laser powder bed fusion qualification and accelerating real-world adoption, we’re demonstrating how collaboration can overcome technical, regulatory, and supply chain hurdles to deliver tangible results to the warfighter and allied defence operations.”
