July 25, 2016 Updated 7/25/2016
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Rachel Abbey McCafferty
Crain’s Cleveland Business
Youngstown, Ohio-based America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, last week announced seven awardees for its most recent additive manufacturing project call.
According to a news release, the goal is for America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining, which operates it, to make about $ 5.5 million available for the awards. The project teams will be expected to provide another $ 5.5 million in matching funds. This brings the institute’s portfolio of additive manufacturing investments to nearly $ 100 million in public and private funds, the release stated.
“We are excited to get the projects from this latest Project Call underway as they achieved an unprecedented level of balance between advancing the technical R&D industry needs and developing solid workforce, education, and outreach plans that are so crucial to the successful transition and commercialization of the project outcomes,” said Rob Gorham, America Makes director of operations, in the release.
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“America Makes and its membership community are committed to ensuring that the U.S. manufacturing workforce is educated in using AM innovations for our nation’s economic competitive advantage,” Gorham said.
The release noted that the seven projects are “subject to the finalization of all contractual details and requirements.” The projects and their lead awardees are as follows:
• Carnegie Mellon University is leading a project related to creating 3-D core or tooling products in the aerospace industry.
• University of Texas at El Paso and team are looking at wire embedding in 3-D printed products.
• The team led by Wolf Robotics LLC, a Lincoln Electric company, is working to help “AM industrial user base to take advantage of the lower cost and increased flexibility associated with scalable, multi-axis (nine and above) robot systems,” the release stated.
• The 3D Systems Corp.-led team is trying to address the “current lack of printable materials suitable for biomimetic modeling within the health care field,” the release stated.
• Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies Inc. is leading a team focused on the design and manufacturing of lattice structures.
• A team led by the Youngstown Business Incubator will work on a project around sand printing for the metal casting industry.
• Raytheon and team “will seek to advance AM from 2-D-constrained designs to conformal and embedded solutions to enable multi-material printing of integrated 3D electronics and non-planar structures,” the release stated. This could apply to a variety of industries.
These projects will begin next month, John Wilczynski, America Makes deputy director of technology development, said in the release. For more information on the individual projects, visit the America Makes website.
