America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, has announced its next project call for additive manufacturing applied research and development projects.
Having previously awarded research contracts to major players in the 3D printing industry – 3D Systems was recently awarded over $1 million dollars for two contracts to develop advanced aerospace and defence manufacturing capabilities – America Makes is set to provide up to $8 million in funding towards projects driven by the National Centre for Defense Manufacturing and Machining.
The funding will match the cost share from the awarded project teams for total funding worth $16 million.
“Today’s announcement marks yet another significant investment in AM made available through the Institute,” said Rob Gorham, America Makes Director of Operations. “With the addition of this Project Call, along with our most recent Directed Project Opportunity funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), America Makes will soon have a portfolio worth more than $68 million in public and private funds invested in advancing the state-of-the-art in AM in the United States.”
The America Makes Project Call is focused on five technical topic areas:
Additive Manufacturing Design: The objective of this technical focus area is to drive technological advancements in new and novel non-proprietary design methods and tools required to enable a culture change and break the cycle of designing AM parts like cast or machined parts.
Additive Manufacturing Material: The objective of this technical focus area is to build the body of knowledge around benchmark AM property characterisation data and eliminate variability in “as-built” material properties.
Additive Manufacturing Process: The objective of this technical focus area is to drive technological advancements that enable faster, more accurate, and higher detail resolution AM machines with larger build volumes and improved “as-built” part quality.
Additive Manufacturing Value Chain: The objective of this technical focus area is to drive technological advancements that enable step change improvements in end-to-end value chain cost and time to market for AM produced products.
Additive Manufacturing Genome: The objective of this technical focus area is to drive technological advancements that enable step change improvements in the time and cost required to design, develop, and qualify new materials for AM.
To be eligible a lead proposer must be an America Makes member by the proposal submission deadline of Friday, May 1, 2015. The award recipients will be announced on Friday, June 12, 2015. The anticipated start date of the second set of projects is July 2015.
