America Makes and National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining project focuses on sustainable production of aerospace and defense components.
6K Additive, a division of 6K, has been selected by RTX Technology Research Center (RTRC) and the University of Arizona for the America Makes and National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) Environmental Additive Research for Tomorrow’s Habitat (EARTH) project. The project aims to explore more sustainable means of production of aerospace and defense products via additive manufacturing.
The EARTH Project totals $1.2 million, funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense. According to 6K Additive, the project will utilize advanced mode-guided process development techniques, emerging commercially available laser optics and more efficient powder feedstock to optimize Ti-6A1-4V for deposition rate, feedstock reuse, and recyclability. The feedstock and print process optimization will be paired with techno-economic and lifecycle analyses to quantify and exploit its benefits to sustainability.
The goal is to increase deposition rates for metal additive manufacturing by at least 2X and reduce feedstock production energy by at least 75% while maintaining part quality. Ultimately, 6K expects an overall 50% reduction in energy for the production of additive components.
“RTX is pursuing sustainable additive manufacturing processes to produce next-generation aerospace and defense products as well as support out-of-production part replacement,” said Brian Fisher, principal investigator for the Powder and Process Optimization for Sustainable Additive Manufacturing (POSAM) project, RTX.” As part of this plan, our goal is to introduce hundreds of additively manufactured parts to the market over the next several years. We selected 6K Additive because of their process of converting revert and used powder into high-value, premium powder, which helps us to measure quality and carbon footprint in the same project. These advances not only make additive manufacturing more sustainable but will drive down costs for production at scale.”
This POSAM approach, coupled with a rigorous assessment of its impact, is expected to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing within the Department of Defense (DoD) supply chain. The project leaders claim that RTX, 6K Additive and University of Arizona teams will prove the POSAM approach’s ability to speed print rates and reduce energy, as well as its ability to streamline complex supply chains through lower cost, sustainable processes and the use of flexible material sources.
“[M]uch of this success is driven by our proprietary technology for processing titanium and refractory metals at scale – powering both customers and the environment by recycling scrap streams back to premium powders,” said Frank Roberts, President of 6K Additive. “We’re honored to be selected for this important and market-critical project.”
6K Additive claims to be the world’s first producer of additive manufactured powder made from sustainable sources – offering powders made from nickel, titanium, copper, stainless steel, aluminum alloys, and refractory metals such as tungsten, niobium and rhenium.
Backed by the UniMelt production-scale microwave plasma process, the company’s technology is designed to spheroidizes metal powders precisely, while controlling the chemistry and porosity of the final product with zero contamination and high-throughput production.
According to a recent LCA study, this approach makes it possible to achieve reductions of 90% in energy usage and carbon emissions for its nickel-based alloys and a 75% reduction for titanium alloys.
