America Makes Adds 25 Suppliers to $10.5M Metal AM Qualification Program

America Makes Awards $10.5M to 25 Metal AM Suppliers

America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining have selected 25 organizations for a $10.5 million program to standardize metal additive manufacturing supplier qualification for the U.S. defense industrial base.

What the Program Requires

The project creates unified requirements for training, process control and supplier audits. Wichita State University's National Institute for Aviation Research will develop the curriculum for production and engineering operations managers. Participating suppliers will implement documented process controls and then undergo audits to prove they can produce qualified LPBF or DED components for the Department of War.

The Selected Organizations

The 25 awardees span the metal AM supply chain: machine builders like ADDiTEC and FormAlloy, production service providers such as AML3D USA and Cumberland Additive, aerospace players including Collins Aerospace, GKN Aerospace GTC and Eaton Corporation, materials suppliers, and smaller manufacturers that the program is meant to help break into qualified defense production.

Why This Matters

Defense acquisition currently requires part-by-part qualification, which bottlenecks production when each customer demands different data for the same process. This program tries to fix that by giving suppliers a single, shared qualification pathway. If it works, it should shorten the time between a supplier buying a metal AM machine and shipping a qualified part to the Pentagon.

What Comes Next

Awardees will report progress at America Makes Technical Review and Exchange events during the project's execution phase. The program expands an earlier JAQS-SQ cohort of six LPBF suppliers and follows a separate ASTM-style qualification template project led by ASTRO America.