America Makes has announced a new Directed Project Call worth $1m in total funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Manufacturing and Industrial Base Technology Division to advance domestic additive manufacturing capabilities for aerospace and defence high Mach applications.
The organisation has a long-standing relationship with the US Armed Forces, with a seven-year $322m Cooperative Agreement between America Makes and the AFRL signed in December 2019, and other 3D printing-based Project Calls announced in May 2020 and November 2017.
This latest Project Call – the Maturation of Additive Geometric Management Approaches (MAGMA) – will focus on improvements to geometries, thermal management and the producibility of additive manufacturing components. To do this, it will use model-based approaches to account for various factors which impede product shape.
MAGMA is said to build upon learnings from previous America Makes project calls, including a project that focused on the use of additive manufacturing to produce conformal heat exchangers for propulsion applications in 2015. America Makes says is aligns with strategic swimlanes determined in its AM Technology Roadmap that will help to promote inquiry, knowledge-sharing and technical advancements across the entire industry.
“The MAGMA Directed Project Call addresses an inherently complex and ongoing problem that has significant implications for the aerospace and defence sectors,” commented Brandon D. Ribic, Ph.D., America Makes Technology Director. “With this project call, our goal is to gain a better understanding of geometric tolerancing as it relates to thermal management by leveraging model-based technologies to advance designs and demonstrate measurable improvement in the producibility of AM components for high Mach applications. We highly encourage members to team with a design authority who has a deep understanding of design intent in this area.”
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