US Air Force Awards Concurrent Technologies $4.4M to Complete Work on Large Format 3D Printer

Concurrent Technologies (CTC), a Pennsylvania-based applied research nonprofit specializing in developing advanced manufacturing solutions, has been awarded $4.4 million from the US Air Force to complete its work on development of a large-format metal powder bed fusion (PBF) printer. The project began in the fall of 2022, when it was announced that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded $5.2 million to CTC and Nikon SLM Solutions to develop the “world’s largest” PBF printer.

With the latest contract, CTC will finish design of the machine, install it, and perform parts qualification for components that are representative of the Air Force’s planned use of the machine. As the AFRL contracted CTC to develop the machine with a 1.5 meter z-axis, it will likely come in handy for the many additive manufacturing (AM) applications that both the Air Force and other US agencies (like NASA) are developing in the fields of rocketry and hypersonics.

In a press release about the $4.4 million award, CTC President and CEO Edward Sheehan Jr. said, “CTC is committed to advancing manufacturing capabilities and supporting the defense industry’s critical needs. The technical work we are performing for this project includes elements of CTC’s full-service portfolio of [AM] capabilities including design, testing, post processing, machining, and qualification.”

Image courtesy of AFRL

This is the second DoD contract for CTC in the last few months, with the company also receiving $13 million from the US Army in June 2024 to explore light-weighting of combat vehicles with friction stir welding (FSW) AM.

All the murkiness surrounding the AM industry’s trajectory tends to clear up substantially when you look into where AFRL’s money is going over an extended period of time. For one thing, that’s because the AFRL is persistently pushing the same agenda of larger, more complex metal parts.

For another, just as importantly, it’s because the work that the Air Force is doing consistently leads to results in terms of more and more mission-critical parts becoming certified. If accelerating certification is the name of the game right now for AM, then it’s impossible to ignore how crucial of a player the AFRL is in that game.

For the same reasons, organizations like Concurrent Technologies will become more and more indispensable to raising AM, across the board, to the level of end-use production. Especially in the US, the AM industry needs the all hands on deck mentality of public-private consortia in order to jumpstart into its next phase of evolution. The CTC’s of the world are the connecting tissue that can effectively link the public and private sectors.

Featured image courtesy of Concurrent Technologies Corporation