America Makes Announces Open Project Call Totaling $1.6M in Funding

America Makes announces a new Open Project Call (OPC) worth $1.6 million in total funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Manufacturing and Industrial Base Technology Division. The OPC goal is to accelerate the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective and energy-efficient additive manufacturing (AM) technologies to meet defense and/or commercial needs.

Specifically, the OPC aims to support key swimlanes—Design, Material, Process, AM Genome and Value Chain—of the America Makes’ AM Technology Roadmap. The Roadmap identifies measurable and meaningful challenges that, when met, promote inquiry, knowledge-sharing and technical advancements across the industry.

“This Open Project Call represents a vast array of topics and opportunities to benefit our membership and our industry at large,” says Brandon D. Ribic, Ph.D., America Makes technology director. “As our first OPC of 2021, we are thrilled with the efforts of our Roadmap Advisory and Working Groups for their contributions in identifying, prioritizing, and developing these technology and education and workforce development topics. We also appreciate the provided insightful membership input that helped to further enhance this OPC. I look forward to receiving the quality and innovative responses that we have come to expect from our membership community.”

The 2021 OPC addresses five technical topic domains:

• Topic 1: Strategies for Real-time Defect Mitigation for AM Processes
• Topic 2: Introductory-level Training Course on the Inspection and Quality Assurance of AM Components
• Topic 3: Accelerating Qualification of AM Materials for High-temperature Applications
• Topic 4: Solid-state AM Process Technical Data Package Maturation
• Topic 5: Assessing Opportunities for AM Process Productivity Improvement

The 2021 OPC requires a cost share of at least 50% match and must be from non-federal funding sources. More information, details and participant guidelines for the 2021 OPC can be found here. 

In other related news, America Makes issues a call for topics for its next Rapid Innovation Call (RIC). The Institute is seeking topic submissions by July 2, 2021, with the intent to officially launch a RIC at the beginning of August when future funding opportunities will be made available.

The RIC project model provides the Institute with an agile framework to adapt and pivot quickly to the evolving challenges of the supply chain via direct input from its membership community and/or government stakeholders.

More information, details, and participant guidelines for the RIC Call for Topics can be found here. 

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

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