Nikon Advanced Manufacturing has teamed up with the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), the organisation behind America Makes. Their mission? To push the boundaries of Additive Manufacturing using Constellium’s Aheadd CP1 aluminium alloy. The initiative focuses on enhancing the alloy’s use in the defence and aerospace sectors.
Backed by $2.1 million in funding from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD ManTech) through America Makes, the project covers the initial two phases of a broader, multi-phase program.
Key partners include Constellium, ASTM International, and 3Degrees, along with a consortium of leading defence metal AM specialists from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, General Atomics, and Honeywell Aerospace Technologies. These industry leaders will provide guidance and oversight throughout the program’s development.
Hamid Zarringhalam, CEO of Nikon Advanced Manufacturing, said, “We are committed to accelerating and scaling metal Additive Manufacturing for defence and aerospace applications. Manufacturers recognise AM’s tremendous potential to address gaps in the defence industrial base, particularly through high-performance materials and advanced technologies like Nikon SLM Solutions’ large-format NXG XII 600 series laser Powder Bed Fusion [PBF-LB] systems.”
The CP1 aluminium alloy is considered to have significant potential for additive manufacturing, especially in applications related to thermal management and heat exchanger-type components commonly used in defence and aerospace sectors. As part of the project’s testing phases, Nikon Advanced Manufacturing will leverage its Nikon AM Synergy platform to validate and generate material datasets for CP1 systematically.
The resulting materials database is expected to play a pivotal role in advancing applications for the U.S. Department of Defense and the commercial aerospace sector. The U.S. government intends to share the datasets with qualified partners across the defence and aerospace ecosystem. Leading defence contractors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have reportedly projected significant returns on investment (ROI) from integrating the CP1 alloy into their platforms, offering improvements over existing alloys and manufacturing process combinations.
“This project focuses on basic and intermediate-level property characterisation, and we will form a collaborative Government Advisory Team with the Joint Additive Manufacturing Working Group (JAMWG) to support programme direction-setting, review and go/no-go decisions, as well as to guide the Material Property Dataset transfer into the Workbench for Additive Materials (WAM) database,” explained Dr Behrang Poorganji, Nikon Advanced Manufacturing Vice President of Technology.
Image Source: Constellium
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