America Makes Efforts for Industrialization of am Capabilities to Reduce Casting & Forging Lead Times

Conference Abstract: Driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), America Makes is a Department of Defense Manufacturing Innovation Institute focused on additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Since its inception, America Makes has leveraged a national collaborative ecosystem to advance the readiness level of AM technologies and invigorate the knowledge base, skills, and training available for the domestic AM supply chain. Our strategy is the product of collaboration with our membership, which is comprised of representation from all tiers of the domestic AM supply chain. Castings and forgings are important to the production and readiness of various defense platforms. Supply chain disruption and manufacturing lead times can be influenced by various factors including weather, labor, policy, geopolitical uncertainty, and manufacturing capacity. In 2022, America Makes initiated delivery of a strategic approach to verify improvements in productivity, yield, and cost for casting and forging manufacturing operations and end use applications by leveraging AM. A series of workshops were held in March and May of 2023 to gather expert inputs from academia, government, and organizations from the casting, forging, and AM domestic supply chain to outline a strategic approach for scaling, demonstrating, and verifying the impact AM technologies offer for casting and forging production. An update will be given on the current efforts and progress in executing the casting & forging strategy. Specific areas to be addressed include: AM for sand casting, AM for investment casting, utilizing AM for preform manufacturing of wrought parts, DED and cold spray for forging die repair, and technoeconomic analysis of AM for bridging cast and wrought component sourcing gaps.