YOUNGSTOWN, OH, USA, Apr 1, 2026 — America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) announced two new project calls worth a combined $14.5M. Both are funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD ManTech).
The first project call, Delta Qual 2.0, is worth $9M in funding and addresses key additive manufacturing (AM) qualification challenges across the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) by streamlining testing requirements, strengthening machine installation standards, and increasing flexibility for processing parameters. These advancements support the Department of War’s (DoW) objectives to deploy reliable, cost-effective, and scalable advanced manufacturing solutions for national security.
“Modernizing qualification for advanced manufacturing is essential to maintaining our defense readiness,” said John Martin, Additive Manufacturing Research Director at America Makes. “This project lays the groundwork for a more agile, trusted, and scalable manufacturing ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver mission-critical parts faster and with greater confidence for decades to come.”
Proposed efforts are expected to deliver actionable insights that reduce technical and industrial risk while enabling realistic transition pathways. Collectively, the outcomes are intended to provide mutual value to the DoW and Organic Industrial Base (OIB).
The Delta Qual 2.0 project call encompasses three topic areas, including:
- Topic 1: Quantitative Measurement-Based Installation Qualification – Establish enhanced measurement, calibration, and maintenance procedures for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) subsystems to create a robust machine performance baseline that enables event-based requalification with little to no mechanical testing.
- Topic 2: Bracketed Qualification for LPBF – Establish a qualification framework with defined process bounds, allowing parameter variation within those limits without requiring requalification, enabling advanced, variable toolpath strategies.
- Topic 3: Red Team – Develop a “Red Team” of industry, academia, and government subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders to advise the teams funded under Topics 1 and 2 and facilitate the transition of the work performed under those areas into industry.
The second project call, Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM), is worth $5.5M in funding and focuses on developing material allowables for a high-strength, 7075-T73-equivalent aluminum alloy across three classes of LPBF AM systems, enabling scalable production on small, medium, and large-format printers. By delivering a corrosion-resistant, aerospace-grade alloy with broad defense and commercial applications, the effort is positioned to generate a strong return on investment for original equipment manufacturers and OIB as it transitions into qualified production.
This project builds on previous efforts, including Joint Metal Additive Database Definition (JMADD) and Generation of Additive Material Allowables for Ti-6Al-4V (GAMAT), by targeting the qualification of a high-strength, 7075-equivalent aluminum alloy for AM. Using large-format, multi-laser LPBF systems, the effort aims to deliver robust material data supporting durable, corrosion-resistant components for critical defense applications.
A key priority is characterizing environmental durability, intergranular corrosion resistance, stress-corrosion cracking behavior, and fatigue-crack growth performance, to ensure the alloy can support long-life, high-strength structural applications. Establishing these data-driven attributes will enable future assessments of fracture toughness and damage tolerance, supporting the transition of a matured LPBF aluminum alloy into critical defense platforms.
“Qualifying advanced AM materials like this alloy directly strengthens the Defense Industrial Base,” said Martin. “By delivering validated data and maturing LPBF capability, we’re giving U.S. manufacturers what they need to produce reliable components for critical defense systems.”
The GOTHAAM project will consist of two phases. Phase 0 will develop a process control document (PCD) and a preliminary qualification dataset to be used in subsequent phases.
- Phase 0: Establish baseline feedstock, process, and material requirements to enable qualification.
- Phase 1: Based on the findings of Phase 0, generate MMPDS-compliant material allowables by testing the Phase 0 process across small, medium, and large multi-laser LPBF machines to confirm scalable performance and machine-to-machine equivalency for defense use.
Project call timeline:
- Launch: March 31
- Kickoff Webinars:
- Submission Deadline:
- Delta Qual 2.0: No later than 5 p.m. ET on June 2
- GOTHAAM: No later than 5 p.m. ET on June 2
Proposers for the project calls are advised to reference the RFP for full details and guidelines.
- Delta Qual 2.0: HERE
- Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM): HERE
About America Makes
America Makes is the nation’s leading public-private partnership for additive manufacturing (AM) technology and education. America Makes members from industry, academia, government, workforce and economic development organizations, work together to accelerate the adoption of AM and the nation’s global manufacturing competitiveness. Founded in 2012 as the Department of Defense’s national manufacturing innovation institute for AM and first of the Manufacturing USA network, America Makes is based in Youngstown, Ohio, and managed by the not-for-profit National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM). For more information, visit americamakes.us.
