Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) Experimental Purposes: AM Metals Printer and Material Qualifications

The AMPO seeks an innovative solution designed to expand on current DAF capabilities to produce aircraft components via metal additive manufacturing. The desired outcome of this solicitation seeks to acquire two metal printers of models currently owned by the DAF (EOS, GE M2 Series 5 Concept Laser, Velo3D Sapphire) to complete MMPDS equivalent S-basis dataset for a high strength aluminum alloy, such as A6061-RAM2, A7050-RAM2, or A205, sufficient for structural, non-critical applications, demonstrating an ability to use metal AM technologies to fabricate and develop aerospace parts for flightworthy applications and production support application. Experimentation on the selected high strength aluminum alloy shall include testing and evaluation of tensile, fatigue, and physical properties (Young’s and shear modulus, mean coefficient of thermal expansion, thermal conductivity, and specific heat) with Minimum 30 tensile tests per orientation and Minimum 54 fatigue samples, i.e., 9 samples for each stress ratio and level combination (3 stress levels and 2 stress ratios). Draft specifications for powder, heat treatment, and material printed in the selected printer will be developed in the base period. This effort is not intended to be an alloy development effort but is an experimental additive manufacturing evaluation utilizing an available alloy.