Nikon Advanced Manufacturing and America Makes to develop Aheadd CP1 dataset
May 20, 2025
Nikon Advanced Manufacturing announced that it has entered into a development agreement with the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), manager of America Makes, to advance the use of Constellium’s Aheadd CP1 aluminium alloy in Additive Manufacturing, particularly for defence and aerospace applications.
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This $2.1 million project – funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD ManTech) through America Makes – encompasses the first two phases of the multi-phase programme. Project partners include Constellium, ASTM International and 3Degrees, and a consortium of prime defence metal AM experts from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, General Atomics, and Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, who will advise and monitor the programme’s progress.
Hamid Zarringhalam, CEO of Nikon Advanced Manufacturing, said, “We are committed to accelerating and scaling metal Additive Manufacturing for defence and aerospace applications. Manufacturers recognise AM’s tremendous potential to address gaps in the defence industrial base, particularly through high-performance materials and advanced technologies like Nikon SLM Solutions’ large-format NXG XII 600 series laser Powder Bed Fusion [PBF-LB] systems.”
The CP1 aluminium alloy is thought to hold immense additive manufacturing potential, particularly in thermal management and the heat exchanger-type components utilised in defence and aerospace. Nikon Advanced Manufacturing will use Nikon AM Synergy to systematically validate and produce the CP1 material datasets through the project’s testing phases.
“This project focuses on basic and intermediate-level property characterisation, and we will form a collaborative Government Advisory Team with the Joint Additive Manufacturing Working Group (JAMWG) to support programme direction-setting, review and go/no-go decisions, as well as to guide the Material Property Dataset transfer into the Workbench for Additive Materials (WAM) database,” explained Dr Behrang Poorganji, Nikon Advanced Manufacturing Vice President of Technology.
The resulting materials database is expected to act as a crucial enabler for the US Department of Defense and commercial aerospace applications, with the US government going on to release the datasets to qualified partners in the defence and aerospace ecosystem. Prime defence contractors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are said to have projected substantial return on investment (ROI) towards integration in their platforms over current alloy and manufacturing process combinations.
