6K Additive has been selected by RTX Technology Research Center (RTRC) and the University of Arizona for the America Makes and National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) EARTH project.
The Environmental Additive Research for Tomorrow’s Habitat (EARTH) project, totalling 1.2 million USD, is funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD(R&E)). This proposal will seek to produce aerospace and defence products in a more sustainable way with additive manufacturing.
With 6K Additive, the RTRC will utilise advanced mode-guided process development techniques, emerging commercially available laser optics, and more efficient powder feedstock to optimise additive build Ti-6A1-4V material for deposition rate, feedstock reuse, and recyclability. The feedstock and print process optimisation will be paired with techno-economic and lifecycle analyses to quantify and exploit its benefits to sustainability. The proposal is expected to increase the deposition rate by at least 2X and reduce feedstock production energy by at least 75%, providing an overall 50% reduction in energy used to produce parts with additive manufacturing. The collaborators also expect the part quality to be maintained, complex supply chains to be streamlined, and the Department of Defense's adoption of additive manufacturing to be accelerated as a result of their work.
“RTX is pursuing sustainable additive manufacturing processes to produce next-generation aerospace and defence products as well as support out-of-production part replacement. As part of this plan, our goal is to introduce hundreds of additively manufactured parts to the market over the next several years,” said Brian Fisher, principal investigator for the POSAM project, RTX. “We selected 6K Additive because of their process of converting revert and used powder into high-value, premium powder, which helps us to measure quality and carbon footprint in the same project. These advances not only make additive manufacturing more sustainable but will drive down costs for production at scale.”
“Time and again, 6K Additive continues to prove itself as having one of the market’s only tested processes to achieve new levels of sustainability and quality in a highly regulated market in aerospace and defence. And much of this success is driven by our proprietary technology for processing titanium and refractory metals at scale – powering both customers and the environment by recycling scrap streams back to premium powders,” added Frank Roberts, President of 6K Additive. “The project award by the prestigious team at America Makes in collaboration with a leading defense and aerospace prime in RTX and a well-respected AM research institution in the University of Arizona further proves that 6K Additive is leading the sustainable, high-quality powder production for additive manufacturing. We’re honored to be selected for this important and market-critical project.”
