There’s a reasonable chance that you have not yet heard about the Additive Manufacturing Consortium (AMC), which was launched in 2010 by EWI in Columbus, Ohio. EWI is a 140-employee, non-profit organization that develops and commercializes advanced manufacturing solutions, especially materials joining technology. Tim Caffrey, associate consultant at Wohlers Associates, and I visited EWI in November 2011 and we were very impressed by the people, equipment, and organization. EWI is launching Fabrisonic LLC, a joint venture between Solidica and EWI aimed at commercializing ultrasonic additive manufacturing (UAM) technology.

It was in Columbus that we learned more about the AMC. According to Dr. Ian Harris, AMC director and EWI technology leader, the consortium was developed in response to a need for collaboration, including design allowable data. The focus of the AMC is to advance the manufacturing readiness of AM technologies and to generate precompetitive data to benefit its members. The AMC was largely inspired by the Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing, a document developed in 2009 with participation from 65 experts in academia, industry, and government. Wohlers Associates enjoyed playing an active role in this national effort. One of the goals of the AMC is to organize a National Test Bed Center that includes extensive equipment and staff resource capabilities, which was one of the roadmap recommendations.

The AMC currently consists of 28 partners from the U.S. government, private sector, and research. Among them are the Air Force, Army, Boeing, GE, General Dynamics, Goodrich, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and Northrop Grumman. Wohlers Associates is the newest partner of the Additive Manufacturing Consortium. We are excited about the opportunity of helping the AMC achieve its goals and advance AM to a new level.