Ursa Major
Ursa Major has secured a follow-on contract award with America Makes to qualify its copper additive manufacturing process for hypersonic flight.
The contract represents 5 million USD investment, with America Makes providing 4 million USD and Ursa Major the remaining 1 million USD.
Ursa Major and America Makes have been working together since 2021, when an Ursa Major Advanced Manufacturing Lab was established in 2021. Since then, Ursa Major engineers have developed an additive manufacturing process capability for NASA's GrCop-42 copper-chromium-niobium alloy and produced prototype thrust chambers for the vacuum variant of the Hadley liquid rocket engine. This year, the collaboration between the two organisations has shifted from prototype printing to the production and qualification of engine hardware.
Throughout the next two years, Ursa Major will use the 5 million USD set aside for this latest contract to transition its copper additive manufacturing capability into flight-qualified hardware for the National Center for Defence Manufacturing and Machining, as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory based our of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The company will install a Velo3D Sapphire XC Metal 3D printer to qualify its copper 3D printing process on a full-scale production platform, before printing 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,” said 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.”
“Ursa Major continues to be at the forefront of implementing additive manufacturing in aerospace and defence programs,” added 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.”