Leveraging Additive for High Velocity Applications (LAVA) Project Call – Feb. 2022

America Makes announces LAVA Project Call worth $500K in total funding.

Demonstrating measurable improvement for AM product distortion compensation or mitigation relevant to high velocity applications

NCDMM and AFRL are seeking responses that develop and demonstrate model-based approaches to advance the domestic supply chain’s capability to mitigate various factors that result in unacceptable variances in final AM product geometry for high velocity applications.

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 5pm ET on Friday, March 4, 2022.

Dates/Deadlines:

Project Call Announcement and Posting

1/26/2022

Project Call Kick-off Webinar (Registration Required – see www.americamakes.us)

2/3/2022

Questions from Proposers about Scope or Approach Due

2/4/2022

Responses to Proposers about Scope or Approach Due
(All questions and responses will be shared with all proposers on www.americamakes.us)

2/9/2022

Deadline for proposal lead to complete a fully executed America Makes Membership Agreement

2/18/2022

Fully Executed NDA with NCDMM (only if proposal contains proprietary information)

2/18/2022

Full Project Proposal Submission Due Date (Note: No Concept Paper Submission)

3/4/2022

Anticipated Decision and Notification of Project Proposal Teams

4/1/2022

Anticipated Date to have ALL Projects on Contract

5/2/2022

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Only the project lead must be a member of America Makes.

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 schedule. Questions asked AFTER the scheduled Q&A session will NOT be addressed.

The lead proposer must be an America Makes member by Friday, February 18, 2022. Information on how to join America Makes is available at www.americamakes.us/membership . While partners to the lead proposer are not required to be America Makes members, obtaining membership is encouraged. (Note: The foreign membership approval process requires a minimum of three weeks to complete.)  Any foreign persons conducting work on the project shall be declared within the Project Team Appendix.  Any project activities occurring outside of the U.S. or by non-U.S. persons must be reported and approved by the America Makes Program Management Office.  No work can be completed outside of the United States without this approval.  Any use of assets (equipment or personnel) based outside of the United States needs to be clearly identified in your proposal.  Please provide the description, location, and utilization (number of hours or percentage of total effort) for any such assets.  A valid Copy of a Military Critical Technical Data Agreement (DD2345) for each team member (entity) is required for this Project Call. It is the Lead / team’s responsibility to ensure compliance with all applicable export control laws and regulations.

Proposals are reviewed by evaluators who are independent of teams submitting proposals and operate under a confidentiality agreement.  Proposers are encouraged to seek legal counsel prior to submitting any response to this Project Call where there is a question regarding a possibility of future patent applications or the patentability of proposal concepts.

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.

Background IP should be declared in Exhibit I.  All (foreground) IP produced on the project is subject to the terms of the membership agreement (please review details in RFP).

Yes, any partner working with us will need a valid DD2345.

Lava Project Call Q&A

High velocity is referring to the operating conditions of the product. Please refer to the RFP and the evaluation criteria for more details.

Any foreign persons conducting work on the project shall be declared within the Project Team Appendix. Any project activities occurring outside of the U.S. or by non-U.S. persons must be reported and approved by the America Makes Program Management Office. No work can be completed outside of the United States without this approval. Any use of assets (equipment or personnel) based outside of the United States needs to be clearly identified in your proposal. Please provide the description, location, and utilization (number of hours or percentage of total effort) for any such assets.

The lead proposer must be an America Makes member by Friday, February 18, 2022. Information on how to join America Makes is available at www.americamakes.us/membership . While partners to the lead proposer are not required to be America Makes members, obtaining membership is encouraged. (Note: The foreign membership approval process requires a minimum of three weeks to complete.)  Any foreign persons conducting work on the project shall be declared within the Project Team Appendix.  Any project activities occurring outside of the U.S. or by non-U.S. persons must be reported and approved by the America Makes Program Management Office.  No work can be completed outside of the United States without this approval.  Any use of assets (equipment or personnel) based outside of the United States needs to be clearly identified in your proposal.  Please provide the description, location, and utilization (number of hours or percentage of total effort) for any such assets.  A valid Copy of a Military Critical Technical Data Agreement (DD2345) for each team member (entity) is required for this Project Call. It is the Lead / team’s responsibility to ensure compliance with all applicable export control laws and regulations.

The project strategic relevance appendix was requested by the stakeholder to provide proposers an additional opportunity to contextualize a longer-range vision of the proposed work.  This may help to show the merit of the work and why the proposed work is aligned to broader interests.  It is an opportunity to discuss stakeholder buy in and where they see the work going in the future.

No, they are not excluded but it would need to be very clearly outlined how this approach would feed in or support a model-based approach. We would encourage addressing the relevance, significance, and importance as to what that measurement technique or data type presents to the outcomes of the project and how it will be utilized to convey or substantiate the KPP goals are being met.

The Requirements in the RFP outline metal AM except for DED. Metals were left open to afford proposers the opportunity to establish why the material that they are proposing is important, necessary, or worthy to be supported by an opportunity like this.
AM of fiber reinforced corbon carbon precursor relevant materials as well as AM of ceramic matrix composites are of interest.
We did not go any more explicit than that so that proposers who believe that they have a solution or concept in any one of those spaces can provide a response to this opportunity, but the response must be justified.

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