Ursa Major secures $5M contract to develop copper Additive Manufacturing for hypersonic flight
October 29, 2024
Ursa Major Technologies Inc., located in Berthoud, Colorado, USA, has secured a follow-on contract award with America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, to qualify its copper Additive Manufacturing process for hypersonic flight. The contract represents a $5 million investment, with $4 million from America Makes and Ursa Major providing the remaining $1 million.
“Ursa Major continues to be at the forefront of implementing Additive Manufacturing in aerospace and defence programmes,” said John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes. “We are excited to partner with Ursa Major in demonstrating the impact Additive Manufacturing can have in solving supply chain and manufacturing challenges within our defence industrial base.”
Ursa Major and America Makes began their partnership in 2021 with the establishment of the Ursa Major Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Youngstown. In the first two phases of the contract with America Makes, Ursa Major engineers developed an Additive Manufacturing process capability for NASA’s high conductivity and high strength copper-chrome-niobium alloy GrCop-42 and produced prototype thrust chambers for the vacuum variant of the Hadley liquid rocket engine. Continuing through mid-2024, the collaboration’s focus shifted from prototype manufacturing to the production and qualification of engine hardware.
Over the next twenty-one months, Ursa Major aims to use this $4 million to transition its copper Additive Manufacturing capability into flight-qualified hardware for its America Makes customers: the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) and the Air Force Research Laboratory-based out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Ursa Major will install a Velo3D Sapphire XC Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) Additive Manufacturing machine to qualify its copper Additive Manufacturing process on a full-scale production platform. Once qualified, the company will manufacture thrust chambers to support both Hadley and Draper flight engines.
“America Makes has been a trusted partner for the past three years, allowing Ursa Major to create high-quality and scalable systems in our Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Youngstown, Ohio,” shared Nick Doucette, Chief Operations Officer for Ursa Major. “This next step will establish Ursa Major as a scalable and trusted manufacturing partner in the defence and aerospace sector while maturing production readiness for our Draper and Hadley rocket engines.”
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