Through the AM CoE’s Research to Standardization (R2S) initiative, research priorities are identified by the top minds in the field and are matched from the start to the standards that need to be generated to ensure the resulting AM technology’s success.
Under the leadership of the R&D team, the AM CoE partners and R2S Collaborators plan and conduct coordinated R&D projects, prioritized annually, and targeted to expedite the AM standards needed to address the most critical gaps in the AM ecosystem.
Current R&D Progress and Achievements
R&D Roadmap
With input from government agencies, regulators, and subcommittee chairs within ASTM International’s Committee on Additive Manufacturing Technologies (F42), the partners have identified, evaluated, and prioritized a critical set of topics that are forming the foundation of an R&D roadmap. The roadmap will help facilitate the development of high-value standards with quality characteristics that will ensure they are immediately beneficial to the AM.
The R&D team also welcomes suggestions for additional AM research topics.
| Quality | Standards will be technically accurate |
| Usability | Standards will be high-impact and relevant to stakeholder needs |
| Cohesiveness | Standards will be consistent, non-contradictory, and non-overlapping |
| Uniqueness | Standards will fill gaps, not duplicate existing efforts |
| Efficiency | Where possible, existing standards will be used as a foundation and built on to address the needs of AM |
| Value | Standards will target common production challenges to allow industry to take advantage of the opportunities of AM |
Since its inception in 2018, the AM CoE has launched over 30 R&D projects to accelerate AM standardization. Led by our partners and R2S collaborators, these projects seek to generate technical data required for development of consensus-based standards by ASTM committees such as F42.
Project Calls
Twice a year we open Requests for Ideas (RFIs) and Calls for Projects (CFPs) to allow industrial, research, and academic organizations to propose research in specific areas that align with our mission of accelerating the adoption of additive manufacturing by addressing standardization gaps.
Requests for Ideas are open to ASTM technical committee members to submit their ideas for AM standardization. These projects are intended to rapidly generate data and insights needed by the additive manufacturing community and align to specific standardization gaps identified in our roadmap. Ideas are evaluated by ASTM committee members, and successful ideas are assigned to AM CoE partners. The project leads will collaborate with associated ASTM F42 members to develop detailed statements of work and conduct the research.
Calls for Projects allow any non-CoE organization to submit a proposal to potentially lead an AM CoE project. CFP calls typically address specific research challenges that we have identified as important in our mission. Selected projects will receive a funding award as well as training and educational support from the AM CoE to pursue research that contributes to AM standards development.
