Uncertainties in materials and component manufacturing processes are a primary cause of cost escalation and delay during the development, testing and early production of defense systems. In addition, fielded military platforms may have unanticipated performance problems, despite large investment and extensive testing of their key components and subassemblies. These uncertainties and performance problems are often the result of the random variations and non-uniform scaling of manufacturing processes. These challenges, in turn, lead to counterproductive resistance to adoption of new, innovative manufacturing technologies that could offer better results.
DARPA has been investigating the possibilities of 3D printing since the late 1990s, keen to tackle ‘cost escalation’ and delay during the development, prototyping and testing of defense systems.
DARPA launched the Open Manufacturing program to lower the cost and speed the delivery of high-quality manufactured goods with predictable performance in 2014 . It aims to do so by creating a manufacturing framework that captures factory-floor and materials processing variability and integrates probabilistic computational tools, informatics systems and rapid qualification approaches. These newly developed concepts and approaches will be used to characterize and reduce the risk of new manufacturing technologies.
DARPA OM program seeks to develop an Integrated Computational Material Engineering framework that can accurately predict the properties of 3D printed metal components. It seeks to solve this problem by building and demonstrating rapid qualification technologies that comprehensively capture, analyze and control variability in the manufacturing process to predict the properties of resulting products. Success could help unleash the potential time- and cost-saving benefits of advanced manufacturing methods for a broad range of defense and national security needs.
New Mexico additive manufacturing software developer Sigma Labs, has obtained third-party validation of its PrintRite3D platform in a study by U.S. defense agency DARPA.
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