America Makes Awards $1.75M to Additive Manufacturing Projects

America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, has announced funding totaling $1.75 million for two recent project calls, the 2022 Rapid Innovation Call, or RIC, and the Steel Wire-Arc Additive Heat Treatment, or SWAAHT, project. The winning proposals address the evolving challenges of the domestic supply chain and offer progressive solutions, the organization said.

“America Makes continues to support the transformation of the additive manufacturing ecosystem in the United States through innovative, coordinated AM technology development, and education workforce and development,” stated Dr. Brandon Ribic, America Makes Technology Director. “We are thrilled to offer these funding opportunities to our members and partner with industry experts who are driven to advance AM on a national level.”

The 2022 RIC projects, funded by America Makes via the Air Force Research Laboratory, focuses on supporting the America Makes mission of promoting and accelerating the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective, energy-efficient AM technologies to meet defense and/or commercial needs.

Four awardees – Edison Welding Institute, Penn State University, Colorado School of Mines, and the University of Dayton Research Institute – were each presented with the maximum federal funding of $100,000.

The winning proposals of the SWAAHT project will work to inform and build frameworks that the metal additive manufacturing community use when producing steel directed energy deposition and heat treatment practices.

America Makes awarded approximately $600,000 in funding with matching funds from the winning SWAAHT project teams for a total of $1.350 million.  The funding was awarded to teams from Worchester Polytechnic Institute and Penn State University.

These proposals were based on metal additive manufacturing projects that aim to develop an understanding and set of tools specific to the selection of feedstocks, additive manufacturing build parameters, and post-build heat treatments applied to the direct energy deposition of high-strength structural steel shapes.  

Winning teams can advance to phase two of the project and receive a maximum of $750K in funding if phase one objectives are met.  The projects are to be completed by May 2025.