With an objective of taking additive manufacturing (3-D printing) to further advance level, America Makes has drawn up plans to support research and development (R&D) with financial funding of up to $8 million.

America Makes is also called as the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. Once the project is awarded, then the Institute will also provide matching cost of $11 million. 

The main aim of the projects is to address the challenges being faced by major additive manufacturing companies in the US.

Additive Manufacturing is a process, in which digital 3D design data is used to build up a component in layers by depositing material. The 3D printing term is increasingly used for Additive Manufacturing.

The R&D projects focus on five areas in additive manufacturing. The five focus areas are design, material, process, value chain and genome. Each focus area has subset areas. The latest announcement of funding support is the third project call from the Institute and new projects will take off shortly. 

Last month only America Makes announced nine awardees in its latest project call #3 for applied research and development in additive manufacturing. The funding of the new projects will also encourage commercialization of latest additive manufacturing technologies.

The successful commercialization of new technologies will take the additive manufacturing sector a step further, said Rob Gorham, Director (operations) at America Makes.

One of the nine awarded projects is being taken up by the University of Pittsburgh, which is working along with Johnson & Johnson, ITAMCO and University of Notre Dame. The project aims at developing parametric designs of functional support structures for metal alloy feed stocks. 

The other R&D projects have been taken up by Raytheon with General Electric (GE), University of Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh, GE Global Research, Boeing, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan and The University of Texas at El Paso.

John Wilczynski, Deputy Director (Technology Development, America Makes, said: "America Makes is addressing and overcoming known additive manufacturing challenges by working on innovative solutions that can be rapidly transitioned and commercialized. The response to Project Call #3 was outstanding and we're excited to get these awarded projects underway."

Raytheon in association with General Electric (GE) is working on multi-disciplinary design analysis for seamless AM Design, analysis, build and redesign workflows. 

The University of Notre Dame along with Case Western Reserve University and other organizations is working on the economic production of next generation of orthopedic materials through powder reuse in AM.

Meanwhile, the University of Pittsburgh in conjunction with ANSYS, United Technologies Research Center, has undertaken a project on integrated design tool development for high-potential AM applications.

GE Global Research in association with GE Aviation's Additive Development Center is working on a flexible adaptive open architecture to enable a robust third-party ecosystem for metal powder bed fusion AM systems.

Boeing along with Aerojet, is working on digital threading of AM.

Geogia Institute of Technology along with Siemens has undertaken a project on a design guidance system for AM. 

University of Michigan in conjunction with Altair Product Design Inc is working on cyber-physical design and AM of custom orthoses.

The University of Texas at El Paso along with Northrop Grumman will be developing a low cost industrial multi 3-D system for 3D electronics manufacturing.