President Obama announced on March 9, 2012, that the Administration will launch a Pilot Institute for Manufacturing Innovation. This Pilot Institute will serve as a proof-of-concept for the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation that he has proposed. The Pilot Institute will draw on existing resources and authorities of the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, as well as the National Science Foundation (NSF).
To utilize existing authorities and advance their respective missions, the agencies participating in the Pilot Institute have identified additive manufacturing as the technology focus area for the Pilot Institute. Up to $45 million in federal funding has been made available for the Pilot Institute; this amount does not include the anticipated cost share from other sources.
Applied and basic research at the Pilot Institute may be funded by the participating agencies. This research will pursue a wide range of advanced capabilities, including:
- Development of open architecture additive manufacturing processes that have flexibility in starting raw materials and processing conditions and that can utilize open-architecture machine- control software that can be customized for specific applications.
- Fabrication of novel hybrid materials at relevant scale with multifunctional properties, such as tailored stiffness, electrical conductivity, and cooling passages, including the potential use of direct write and deposition processes.
- Incorporation of in-situ metrology and process controls to measure quality and performance attributes.
- Improved as-deposited surface finish.
- Improved deposition rates, manufacturing throughput, and process reliability.
- Deposition methods for improved surface finish, corrosion resistance, or wear resistance.
- Advanced manufacturing enterprise methodologies for enabling rapid design and functional fabrication of current and future DOD platforms through integration of digital designs with reverse engineering techniques, using computational tools and mechanisms.
- Fabrication methods with lower energy-intensity.
- Advanced methods to rapidly and affordably qualify additive manufacturing processes.