America Makes Announces the Winners for its 2022 Project Calls

America Makes, a U.S. National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, recently announced the winners of the 2022 Rapid Innovation Call (RIC) and the Steel (HY-80) Wire-Arc Additive Heat Treatment (SWAAHT) project call. The funding totals $1.75 million and offers solutions to the evolving challenges faced by the US supply chain. 

America Makes has been around for over a decade, and is a leading driver in the growth of additive manufacturing in the US. Its efforts include education, development, innovation, and aid financially to foster those ideas to reality. 

“America Makes continues to support the transformation of the additive manufacturing (AM) 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.”

This year the organization continued that mission and had two proposal calls to tackle problems related to the supply chain as identified by their members.

The first, RIC, had five topics to which proposers could apply, seeking candidates with ideas that accelerated the development and deployment of innovative additive manufacturing technologies that met commercial and/or defense needs. The second, SWAAHT, dealt with the U.S. Navy’s need to utilize additive manufacturing to help curb casting issues within the supply chain. Specifically, the project sought to build a framework that could be leveraged by the metal AM community when scaling steel DED and heat treatment practices. 

After all of the proposals had been submitted and reviewed, America Makes announced four winners for the RIC on December 16th, 2022, and two winners for the SWAAHT project call on December 23, 2022.  

The winners of the RIC award were:

• The Edison Welding Institute (EWI) with their project on “Process, Thermal, Structure, Property Model for Ti64 Built with DED-LB”
• Penn State University (PSU) who will study the “Effect of Defects on Ti-6Al-4V Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing Components”
• Colorado School of Mines and their project the “Measurement of Process Gas Flow and Delivered Laser Power Impact Toward AM Machine”
• University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) and their project “Rapid Print Characterization for Machine Qualification and Equivalency”

The winners of the SWAAHT award were:

• The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and their project “Development and Transition of HY80 Steel for Qualification to NAVSEA WIRE-DED Tech Pub”
•  Penn State University (PSU) who will study “Additive Manufacturing Casting Replacement Optimization (AMCRO) – Heat Treating and Chemistry”

The four RIC winners all received the maximum federal funding of $100K, while the SWAAHT winners were awarded approximately $600K in funding with $395K in matching funds from the winning project teams. The SWAAHT proposals winners can also receive a maximum of $750K in funding for phase two if objectives from phase one are met.

“We congratulate the winning project teams and are thrilled to see collaboration between the U.S. Navy, industry, and academia,” stated Ribic.

Overall, this is a great opportunity for these researchers to continue pushing additive manufacturing forward and we are eager to see the fruits of their efforts. The RIC projects are expected to be completed by June 2023, and the SWAAHT projects are expected to be completed by May 2025.