America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, is now calling for additive manufacturing (AM) project bids.
The organization plans to invest around US$5 million to fund multiple awards with at least US$5 million in matching funds from the awarded project teams.
The project call is limited to eight ‘critical technology element’ technical topic areas, along with the addition of five ‘critical talent element’ workforce, education, and outreach (WEO) topic areas, and all having subset focus areas. Proposals can address one or more technical topic areas, but must address all evaluation criteria and directly align the technical topic area to one or more WEO topic areas.
The eight critical technology elements of the project call are as follows:
- Design: 1) product and process design aides/applications
- Material: 2) AM tech data packages
- Process: 3) multi-material delivery & deposition systems and/or 4) next-generation machines
- Value chain: 5) advanced sensing & detection methods and/or 6) rapid inspection technologies
- AM genome: 7) benchmark validation use cases and/or 8) model-assisted property prediction.
The five critical talent elements are:
- Knowledge & awareness: 1) elearning courses
- Hands-on learning: 2) instructor-led labs
- Trainee programs: 3) customized & canned training
- Talent pipeline: 4) R&D project mentoring
- Industrial genome: 5) economic value propositions.
Proposers are required to first fill out a Project Concept form and email it to the technical contact, John Wilczynski, America Makes deputy director – technology development, at projectcall@americamakes.us with ‘America Makes PROJECT CONCEPT’ as the subject line. The deadline is Friday, 1 April 2016.
This story uses material from America Makes, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
