America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have awarded $6 million to four project teams tasked with developing high-temperature refractory alloys for AM under the PADAM 2.0 program.
The funding comes from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Foundational Technologies Directorate (AFRL/REMD).
Refractory alloys can withstand the extreme temperatures required in defense applications where conventional materials fall short. Getting them into production through additive manufacturing has been a different problem, one held back by incomplete material property data, process variability, and fragile supply chains. The three topics funded under PADAM 2.0 address each of those gaps.
“PADAM 2.0 is about moving AM refractory alloys from promise to practice,” said John Martin, Additive Manufacturing Research Director at America Makes. “Their outcomes will strengthen domestic manufacturing capability, lower barriers to qualification, and deliver more reliable, high-temperature materials for critical DoW and warfighter applications.”
Funding Targets Materials and Supply Chains
The program splits the work across three topics, with the bulk of the funding concentrated in materials development. Topic 1, which focuses on existing refractory alloy systems, carried up to $2 million per award and funded two teams: one led by Lockheed Martin with Quadrus Corporation, Colorado School of Mines, and 3Degrees, and a second led by HRL Laboratories alongside Boeing, Amaero, Alloyed, and Texas A&M University.
ATI Materials took the single award under Topic 2, which targets novel or emerging alloy systems and is funded at up to $1.7 million. Its team includes Boeing and the University of Dayton Research Institute.
The remaining $300,000 went to Topic 3, where Colorado School of Mines is working alone on a supply chain assessment covering the full path from raw mineral extraction to a qualified finished part. The budget is a fraction of what the materials development teams received, reflecting the scope of a mapping exercise.
Across those four teams, Boeing appears twice, participating in both the existing and emerging alloy tracks without leading either. Colorado School of Mines also shows up in two places, as a subcontractor under Lockheed Martin in Topic 1 and as the sole lead in Topic 3.
Martin added, “Congratulations to the awardees, whose efforts advance the manufacturing industrial base.”
Why Refractory AM Takes Time
The timeline required to bring even one refractory alloy to production readiness offers some perspective on what PADAM 2.0 is up against. Elmet Technologies spent eight years developing 3D printing parameters for C103, a niobium-based refractory alloy, on a single machine platform from 3D Systems before targeting production this year. That timeline covered one alloy on one printer type.
Beyond development timelines, the raw material costs for refractory alloy powders remain high enough to shape how production workflows are designed. Auburn University’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) has reported that C103 powder can cost up to $4,000 per kilogram, which makes process control and powder reuse central to whether refractory AM can work at production scale.
Elmet’s eight-year timeline for one alloy on one machine platform is a single data point, but it suggests the scale of effort refractory AM can require. Against that backdrop, $6 million spread across multiple alloy systems and a $300,000 supply chain assessment points to a program still building the material data and process understanding that qualification would eventually depend on.
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Featured image shows the America Makes facility in Youngstown, Ohio. Photo via America Makes.
