America Makes announces $1.3M CATACS selection
Defense-focused program targets metal additive manufacturing certification gaps
America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have selected project teams for the Corrosion of Additive – Tested At Component Scale (CATACS) program.
The $1.3 million initiative is funded through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD ManTech), and targets two critical areas where additive manufacturing metal parts face corrosion challenges: high-temperature environments and thermal management systems.
The project call was made back in October, and RTX Technology Research Center (RTRC) has now been selected as the team lead for Topic 1, focused on corrosion of AM components at elevated temperatures.
Colorado School of Mines will lead the Topic 2 team, which will be focused on corrosion of AM components for thermal management, with a project group that included Conflux Technology Pty Ltd., Elementum 3D, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Ohio University, and Quintus Technologies.
Qualification barriers in defense AM
AM has drawn significant interest from the Department of Defense for its capacity to enable rapid and customizable parts production. However, qualification and certification of metal AM parts have remained barriers due to a lack of widely accepted testing and processing standards.
Material properties produced through AM can differ from those of traditionally manufactured parts, creating unique corrosion concerns that existing frameworks do not fully address
Framework development and next steps
The CATACS program aims to establish and validate a framework for evaluating corrosion testing needs at the component scale, generate data applicable to metal AM with comparable corrosion performance requirements, and accelerate the adoption of AM parts in high-performance defense systems. The program also seeks to strengthen manufacturing readiness and support scaling of the defense industrial base.
“CATACS is about putting real AM hardware to the test in harsh conditions – because corrosion will find the weak points,” stated Ben DiMarco, Technology Transition Director at America Makes, when the project call was made.
Project teams are scheduled to report on their progress at the America Makes Technical Review and Exchange (TRX) and other industry events during the program’s execution phase.
