America Makes Announces New Multi-Million Dollar Project Calls

America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing & Machining (NCDMM) announced two new project calls totaling a combined $14.5M that are both funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Manufacturing Technology Program (OSD ManTech).

The first project call, Delta Qual 2.0, is worth $9M in funding and addresses key AM qualification challenges across the Defense Industrial Base by streamlining testing requirements, strengthening machine installation standards, and increasing flexibility for processing parameters. These advancements support the Department of War’s objectives to deploy cost-effective and scalable advanced manufacturing solutions for national security.

“Modernizing qualification for advanced manufacturing is essential to maintaining our defense readiness,” says John Martin, Additive Manufacturing research director at America Makes. “This project lays the groundwork for a more agile, trusted, and scalable manufacturing ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver mission-critical parts faster and with greater confidence for decades to come.”

The Delta Qual 2.0 project call encompasses three topic areas, including:

• Topic 1: Quantitative Measurement-Based Installation Qualification – Establish enhanced measurement, calibration, and maintenance procedures for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) subsystems to create a machine performance baseline enabling event-based requalification with little mechanical testing.
• Topic 2: Bracketed Qualification for LPBF – Establish a qualification framework with defined process bounds, allowing parameter variation within those limits without requiring requalification, enabling advanced, variable toolpath strategies.
• Topic 3: Red Team – Develop a “Red Team” of industry, academia, and government subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders to advise the teams funded under Topics 1 and 2 and facilitate the transition of the work performed under those areas into industry.

The second project call, Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM), is worth $5.5M in funding and focuses on developing material allowables for a high-strength, 7075-T73-equivalent aluminum alloy across three classes of LPBF AM systems, enabling scalable production on small, medium, and large-format printers. By delivering a corrosion-resistant, aerospace-grade alloy with defense and commercial applications, the effort is positioned to generate return on investment for original equipment manufacturers and OIB as it transitions into qualified production.

The GOTHAAM project will consist of two phases. Phase 0 will develop a process control document (PCD) and a preliminary qualification dataset to be used in subsequent phases.

• Phase 0: Establish baseline feedstock, process, and material requirements to enable qualification.
• Phase 1: Based on the findings of Phase 0, generate MMPDS-compliant material allowables by testing the Phase 0 process across small, medium, and large multi-laser LPBF machines to confirm scalable performance and machine-to-machine equivalency for defense use.

Proposers for the project calls are advised to reference the RFP for full details and guidelines.

• Delta Qual 2.0: HERE
• Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM): HERE

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.