Concurrent Applied sciences (CTC), a Pennsylvania-based utilized analysis nonprofit specializing in growing superior manufacturing options, has been awarded $4.4 million from the US Air Power to finish its work on improvement of a large-format steel powder mattress fusion (PBF) printer. The undertaking started within the fall of 2022, when it was introduced that the Air Power Analysis Laboratory (AFRL) awarded $5.2 million to CTC and Nikon SLM Options to develop the “world’s largest” PBF printer.
With the most recent contract, CTC will end design of the machine, set up it, and carry out components qualification for elements which are consultant of the Air Power’s deliberate use of the machine. Because the AFRL contracted CTC to develop the machine with a 1.5 meter z-axis, it would possible come in useful for the various additive manufacturing (AM) functions that each the Air Power and different US companies (like NASA) are growing within the fields of rocketry and hypersonics.
In a press launch concerning the $4.4 million award, CTC President and CEO Edward Sheehan Jr. stated, “CTC is dedicated to advancing manufacturing capabilities and supporting the protection business’s crucial wants. The technical work we’re performing for this undertaking consists of parts of CTC’s full-service portfolio of [AM] capabilities together with design, testing, submit processing, machining, and qualification.”
That is the second DoD contract for CTC in the previous few months, with the corporate additionally receiving $13 million from the US Military in June 2024 to discover light-weighting of fight autos with friction stir welding (FSW) AM.
All of the murkiness surrounding the AM business’s trajectory tends to clear up considerably once you look into the place AFRL’s cash goes over an prolonged time period. For one factor, that’s as a result of the AFRL is persistently pushing the identical agenda of bigger, extra complicated steel components.
For one more, simply as importantly, it’s as a result of the work that the Air Power is doing constantly results in outcomes by way of increasingly more mission-critical components turning into licensed. If accelerating certification is the secret proper now for AM, then it’s unattainable to disregard how essential of a participant the AFRL is in that recreation.
For a similar causes, organizations like Concurrent Applied sciences will turn into increasingly more indispensable to elevating AM, throughout the board, to the extent of end-use manufacturing. Particularly within the US, the AM business wants the all fingers on deck mentality of public-private consortia with a view to jumpstart into its subsequent part of evolution. The CTC’s of the world are the connecting tissue that may successfully hyperlink the private and non-private sectors.
Photographs courtesy of AFRL
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