Submissions Due by Friday, July 2, 2021 before 5 pm EDT
News
Open Project Call 2021
June 01, 2021 | Categories: America Makes News, Project Call, Technology
Open Project Call
America Makes announces a new Open Project Call (OPC) worth $1.6M in total funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Manufacturing and Industrial Base Technology Division. The OPC goal is to accelerate the development and deployment of innovative, cost-effective, and energy-efficient additive manufacturing (AM) technologies to meet defense and/or commercial needs.
Specifically, the OPC aims to support key swimlanes—Design, Material, Process, AM Genome and Value Chain—of the America Makes’ AM Technology Roadmap. The Roadmap identifies measurable and meaningful challenges that, when met, promote inquiry, knowledge-sharing, and technical advancements across the industry.
“This Open Project Call represents a vast array of topics and opportunities to benefit our membership and our industry at large,” said Brandon D. Ribic, Ph.D., America Makes Technology Director. “As our first OPC of 2021, we are thrilled with the efforts of our Roadmap Advisory and Working Groups for their contributions in identifying, prioritizing, and developing these technology and education and workforce development topics. We also appreciate the provided insightful membership input that helped to further enhance this OPC. I look forward to receiving the quality and innovative responses that we have come to expect from our membership community.”
Technical Topics
The 2021 OPC addresses five technical topic domains:
- Topic 1: Strategies for Real-time Defect Mitigation for AM Processes
- Topic 2: Introductory-level Training Course on the Inspection and Quality Assurance of AM Components
- Topic 3: Accelerating Qualification of AM Materials for High-temperature Applications
- Topic 4: Solid-state AM Process Technical Data Package Maturation
- Topic 5: Assessing Opportunities for AM Process Productivity Improvement
One-Step Proposal Process
The proposal process for this America Makes Project Call is a one-step process.
A full project proposal, as outlined in the RFP, is due by 5 p.m. EDT Friday, July 2, 2021.
Resources
Dates/Deadlines:
| Project Call Announcement and Posting | 6/1/2021 |
| Project Call Kick-off Webinar (View Recording) | 6/8/2021 |
| Questions from Proposers about Scope or Approach Due | 6/11/2021 |
| Responses to Proposers about Scope or Approach Due
(All questions and responses will be shared with all proposers below. |
6/18/2021 |
| Deadline for all proposal team members to be an America Makes Member | 6/22/2021 |
| Fully Executed NDA with NCDMM (if proposal contains proprietary information) | 6/22/2021 |
| Full Project Proposal Submission Due Date | 7/2/2021 |
| Anticipated Decision and Notification to Project Proposal Teams | 8/3/2021 |
| Anticipated Date to have ALL Projects on Contract | 9/1/2021 |
| All project finalized reports and deliverables received by NCDMM no later than | 5/27/2022 |
Open Project Call Questions & Answers
The IP is owned by the organization that developed the IP, however that IP is subject to the rules outlined in the membership agreement.
All project team members must be America Makes Members by June 22, 2021. Visit the membership page to join.
Foreign owned businesses can take up to 4 weeks to join.
The budget should span the whole nine months. The Period of Performance is broken up into six months of technical execution and 3 months of final report writing, review, and revision.
All Project team members must be America Makes members by June 22, 2021.
Cost share is in addition to federal funding. From RFP – The Open Project Call requires a cost share of at least a 50% match and must be from non-Federal funding sources. A minimum of 50% cost share is required for each project submittal. Example: If $1.00 of funding is requested from America Makes, $0.50 in cost share must be committed against that $1.00 for a total scope of $1.50.
No, material suppliers do not need to be members.
No, an organization cannot pay for a membership to submit a proposal and count that towards project cost share. The cost share must be accrued during the project’s Period of Performance. An organization may however sign a memorandum of understanding, committing to becoming a member through other cost share means. Any cost share submitted during the project would go towards the next membership period membership fees after the current membership commitment has been fullfilled. If the organization is not chosen for award they are still held accountable to gain membership through cost share or through other means.
Yes, a University can be the lead as long as they are a member of America Makes by June 22, 2021.
We are open to any proposed strategy that would improve productivity.
The team is open to both (especially in this short PoP digital files that have no cost duplication would be acceptable)
The team would work collaboratively to market and recruit participants.
The team would expect a pilot course to execute by close of project. That could be within the overall timeline of 9 months. If restrictions prohibit that from happening the America Makes team is dedicated to supporting the instance beyond scope as an agreed upon plan within the PoP).
This would be outlined in the membership agreement.
Yes, as long as federal funding is not used.
This is meant to be an overall introduction course.
This is open for proposal as long as it meets goals and objectives.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
All team members of project team must be America Makes members by 8/21/2020.
Yes, teams may submit more than one Project Proposal.
Questions should be emailed to projectcall@americamakes.us. Questions will be posted to the America Makes website according to the RFP schedule. Questions asked AFTER the scheduled Q&A session will NOT be addressed.
Yes, however all foreign-owned companies must apply for a foreign membership by completing Sections A & B of the membership request form, prior to proposal submission. The approval process for foreign-owned entities can take up to 4 weeks to complete. Please contact Tiffany Westbay for more information.
Please note, federal dollars cannot be spent outside of the Unite States. It is the Lead / team’s responsibility to ensure compliance with all applicable export control laws and regulations.
Yes. The proposals will only be reviewed by the evaluation team and each team member signs a confidentiality agreement.
The owning organization should list anything that they are leveraging that is not going to be made available to the membership at the completion of the project. This could be a patent number or a description of the background IP that is being leveraged.
The IP is owned by the organization that developed the IP, however that IP is subject to the rules outlined in the membership agreement.
