Additive Manufacturing for Defense and Government

Unlike traditional manufacturing, which involves creating a smaller object from a larger source material, additive manufacturing takes raw materials, feeds them through a digital manufacturing system and creates a customized object from that material, eliminating excess material waste. This potential ability to exchange AM design and manufacturing capabilities via file sharing has enormous potential ramifications for reducing shipping and production costs, slashing production-to-end-user cycle times, dramatically improving SWaP ratios, and significantly reducing the logistics footprint. The range of potential applications is limitless: spare parts, medical prosthetics, bioengineered human cells, armor and other force protective equipment, explosives, sensors, and perhaps eventually entire systems, containing printed circuitry, power storage and software.

This outstanding symposium gathers together the government and industry experts who are shaping the future of additive manufacturing for defense and government. They will examine the latest DoD and government plans for spurring the growth of this dynamic technology. How are DoD and Service manufacturing strategies being shaped by additive manufacturing?