DDM Systems Receives Project Award Under America Makes IMPACT 2.0 Part B: Rapid Casting Demonstration Challenge

 DDM Systems (“DDM”) in partnership with the 76th Commodities Maintenance Group (76 CMXG) of the US Air Force Sustainment Center headquartered at Tinker Air Force Base has received $500,000 in funding from America Makes under its IMPACT 2.0 Part B: Rapid Casting Demonstration Challenge. As part of this project titled “Rapid Investment Casting with Ceramic 3DP Shell Molds for Sustainment by the 76th CMXG at Tinker AFB”, the team will perform technology maturation to utilize DDM’s ceramic shell 3D printing technology for producing fully qualified and machined investment castings of a challenge component selected by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (OUSD). The project will be executed in two phases: A 4-month Phase I effort to establish readiness for conducting all necessary activities to produce the challenge component, followed by a 3-month Phase II sprint to produce a fully qualified and machined casting from the supplied tech data package for the challenge component. The project’s goal is to create a ceramic AM-enabled digital manufacturing process with the capability to produce flightworthy machined castings in at most 3 weeks from the initiation of shell printing. The IMPACT 2.0 project call solicited competitive proposals supporting the America Makes and NCDMM mission of promoting and accelerating the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective, and energy-efficient additive manufacturing technologies to meet defense and/or commercial needs. PART B of the project call aimed to demonstrate lead time, productivity, and yield improvements for casting manufacturing operations via additive manufacturing (AM) technologies.