America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) are proud to announce the winners of a recent project call funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering’s Manufacturing Technology Office (OUSW(R&E)), Manufacturing Technology Program worth a total of $1.1M. The project call, Allied Additive Manufacturing Interoperability (AAMI) Program, aims to establish additive manufacturing (AM) equivalency and interoperability between the United States Department of War (DoW) and United Kingdom (UK) Ministry of Defense (MoD) supply chains, focusing on laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) of critical parts. The project will also identify barriers to allied interoperability and support the development of international qualification approaches. Released in March 2025, two awards were anticipated.
AM is increasingly important to U.S. manufacturing, enabling faster lead times, mass customization, lower energy use, complex geometries, and on demand production for both new and legacy systems. Scaling AM to meet demand requires sufficient capable machines, driving the need for strong domestic and international manufacturing partnerships. Over the past few years, regional and distributed supply chain approaches have gained momentum. Executing AM at scale requires a deep knowledge of supply chain capacity, materials, manufacturing technologies, design intent, specifications, and standards. As a result, qualifying AM processes and parts remain a major technoeconomic hurdle.