America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have selected the winning teams for Delta Qual 2.0, a $9 million project call aimed at cutting the qualification barriers that slow additive manufacturing adoption across the U.S. defense industrial base. Three teams, led by ATI Materials, Trusted Metal, Auburn University, and The Barnes Global Advisors, will split the funding across three qualification-focused topic areas.
The program is funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of War, Manufacturing Technology Office (OSW ManTech) and targets three specific bottlenecks: excessive testing requirements, inconsistent machine installation standards, and rigid processing-parameter rules that make it hard to qualify AM parts for defense use.
Three topics, four winning teams
Topic 1, quantitative measurement-based installation qualification, drew two funded teams rather than one. ATI Materials leads a group that includes EOS North America, Phase3D, Laboratory Testing Inc., Lockheed Martin, L3Harris Technologies, and Fluor Marine Propulsion. Trusted Metal leads a parallel team with Dyndrite, RTX Technology Research Center, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Oerlikon, and Velo3D.
Both teams are building measurement and calibration procedures for LPBF subsystems aimed at cutting mechanical testing when a machine is moved, updated, serviced, or newly installed. Each team must run the work across at least three LPBF systems, including two of the same make and model, and put one machine through a software or hardware update to measure performance before and after.
Topic 2, bracketed qualification for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), went to a team led by Auburn University, working alongside Texas A&M, Northrop Grumman, Eaton, Cumberland Additive, Nikon SLM, Prime Tech, 3Degrees, Ansys, Dyndrite, Oqton, NIST, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Naval Air Systems Command, RTX, and Battelle. “Bracketed” qualification means defining a validated processing window so a part can be produced within without triggering a full requalification each time a parameter shifts.
For both Topic 1 and Topic 2, teams are restricted to materials with strong Department of War platform relevance and existing baseline property data, with the two most common already-qualified alloys, Ti6Al4V and AlSi10Mg, explicitly off-limits, pushing the work toward materials that still lack a qualification track record.
Topic 3, described simply as Red Team, went to The Barnes Global Advisors, backed by one of the largest rosters in the call: SAE International, the American Welding Society, ASTM International, Battelle, the University of Texas at El Paso, Colorado School of Mines, Johns Hopkins University, NIST, Elementus Additive, Nikon AM, SME, VulcanForms, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Parker Hannifin, the U.S. Army’s DEVCOM Aviation and Missile Center, the U.S. Army more broadly, NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, the Navy‘s Submarine Industrial Base, the Naval Nuclear Laboratory, and the FAA.
Rather than doing its own qualification research, this team advises the Topic 1 and 2 teams and works to get their results adopted industry-wide: it will define and evaluate Key Performance Parameters for the technical teams at least three times a year, review Topic 1 and 2 progress at least every four months, and work with standards bodies to turn lessons learned into draft AM standards language. It’s also required to coordinate with related America Makes programs, including JAQS, WATCHLIST, and QTIME.
How the funding breaks down
The $9 million splits unevenly by topic: up to $2.7 million per award for each of Topic 1’s two winning teams, up to $2.7 million for Topic 2’s single team, and up to $900,000 for the Topic 3 Red Team. Topics 1 and 2 carry a 50% cost-share requirement; Topic 3 does not. America Makes posted the call on March 31, 2026, set a proposal deadline of June 2, and targeted July 6 for decisions, this week’s announcement follows that timeline.
“Modernizing AM qualification is essential to maintaining our defense readiness,” said John Martin, Additive Manufacturing Research Director at America Makes. “Delta Qual 2.0 will lay the groundwork for a more agile, trusted, and scalable manufacturing ecosystem. Congratulations to the winners, whose efforts are ensuring support for the Department of War’s objectives to deploy reliable, cost-effective, and scalable advanced manufacturing solutions for national security.”
The gap: qualification is slower than the technology
The reason America Makes keeps funding qualification specifically, rather than printers or new alloys, is that AM hardware has outpaced the paperwork needed to trust its output. A part can be printed in hours, but proving it meets defense-grade material and process standards and reproving it every time a machine, a parameter, or a software version changes has remained a slow, test-heavy process.
America Makes has attacked the same gap from another angle with AIM-4AM, a $2 million project call awarded in June 2026 to a team led by Dyndrite that applies machine learning to process-structure-property relationships, aiming to reduce redundant physical testing by linking any reductions to quantified risk categories
On the operator side, the U.S. Navy has moved the same problem from research into contract: in April 2026, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) awarded Colibrium Additive a deal aimed squarely at accelerating the testing, qualification, and certification of metal 3D printed components for military aviation, so fleet aircraft can get airworthy parts faster.
Both efforts share Delta Qual 2.0’s underlying premise: qualification doesn’t have to mean re-running the same physical tests every time something changes. Whether the shortcut comes from better installation measurement, AI-driven material models, or a service branch contracting directly for faster certification, the target is the same timeline problem. Faster qualification, not faster printing, is where defense AM is now racing to catch up.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
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Featured image shows America Makes and NCDMM name winners of a $2M OSW ManTech project call. Photo via America Makes.
