DnF for OTFOC - MetalWerks Inc (1)_Redacted.pdf

Template last updated 4/23/2018

DETERMINATION & FINDINGS FOR OTHER THAN FULL & OPEN COMPETITION

(ACTIONS SAT AND BELOW)

1. DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED PROCUREMENT: Casting and Forging of an experimentally designed alloy.

2. PROPOSED CONTRACTOR/MANUFACTURER:

Metalwerks, Inc 401 Steel ST Aliquippa, Pennsylvania 15001-5415, United States Cage Code: 88D56 Small Business

3. ESTIMATED TOTAL VALUE:

4. STATUTORY AUTHORITY PERMITTING CONTRACTING WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL

AND OPEN COMPETITION: The statutory authority permitting sole source is 41 USC 1901(e), implemented by FAR 13.106-1(b)(1)(i):

_X_ Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements

___ Unusual and Compelling Urgency __ Industrial Mobilization; Engineering, Developmental, or Research Capability; or Expert

Services ___ International Agreement ___ Authorized or Required by Statute ___ National Security ___ Public Interest

5. JUSTIFICATION FOR THE AUTHORITY CITED ABOVE:

The item(s) listed in section one above is available from only one source and competition is precluded for reasons indicated below. There are no substitutes available.

___ Compatibility: The item(s) must be compatible in all aspects (form, fit, and function) with existing systems presently installed. Describe the equipment you have now and how the new item/service must coordinate, connect, or interface with the existing system:

___ Proprietary: A patent, copyright, or proprietary data limits competition. The proprietary data are described as follows:

_X__ Experimental Continuity: The item(s) must be consistent with prior materials in order to ensure experimental continuity. Describe the conditions that necessitate the use of experimental continuity: Material that was developed at smaller scale was produced through MetalWeks Inc. To ensure there is no variability introduced through shifts in manufacturing the material at the larger scale needs to be procured through this company.

___ Warranty: Purchasing item(s) from another manufacturer/provider would void existing warranty. Provide a brief explanation for the use of this reason and the impact that would occur if the item was purchased from another manufacturer/provider:

___ Direct Replacement: These are “direct replacement” parts/components for existing equipment and no substitutes exist.

_X_ Other reasoning to support a sole source buy:

The DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Biology, Materials and Manufacturing

Sciences (BMMS) division requires a sole-source contract with MetalWerks Corporation to procure a specialty ferrous alloy ingot and subsequent rotary forging services. MetalWerks is the only domestic vendor capable of meeting the strict technical, metallurgical, and intermediate scale requirements of this program without introducing catastrophic experimental risk to the Future Medium Machine Gun (FMMG) project.

The domestic specialty metals market is highly polarized, with commercial vendors operating almost exclusively at ultra-small laboratory scales under 50 pounds or massive industrial production scales exceeding 50 tons. Neither extreme can satisfy this program's experimental requirements. MetalWerks is uniquely configured to produce a viable, mid-range, 9-inch diameter ingot utilizing a proprietary combination of Vacuum Induction Melting (VIM) and Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR) at the required volume, with the integrated capability to rotary-forge it down to a high-tolerance, 4-inch diameter rod.

No other domestic vendor possesses this specific combination of specialized tooling, intermediate scale, and integrated processing capacity.

Additionally, ARL built its historical alloy development, characterization, and databases using MetalWerks's proprietary casting and fabrication capabilities. Procuring this material from an alternative source would introduce uncontrollable variables—such as differing furnace atmospheres, thermal-mechanical processing paths, and trace element composition variations. This would break critical data continuity, rendering previous experimental baselines non-comparable and severely disrupting current material development models. The delivered material is vital to the advancement of DEVCOM ARL’s proprietary Machine Learning (ML) models for materials design, which support transition to Applied Research topics for Weapons Sciences (WS), the Armaments Center (AC), and future industrialization. The tight compositional controls and high-precision forging tolerances required to prevent research failure can only be obtained through MetalWerks.

Comprehensive market research conducted by a Materials Engineer with 8 years of experience, confirms no other domestic source can deliver this integrated casting-to-forging process on this specific experimental scale. Special Metals Corporation was investigated as a potential source but was disqualified because they lack the capability to Vacuum Induction Melt and cast an ingot of sufficient size to achieve the required reduction ratio needed to produce a quality forging at a final 4-inch diameter. Sophisticated Alloys Inc. was also investigated but is incapable of the Vacuum Arc Remelting required to produce the low trace element compositional variations specified for this study. Attempting to utilize either vendor would introduce major experimental variations and create a high potential for false-negative results due to poor