The 24-month program will develop real-time process monitoring capabilities for the F3300 and F900 industrial FDM platforms, supporting the transition of additive manufacturing toward qualified, scalable production
Stratasys has secured $7.8 million in funding to develop in-situ quality assurance capabilities for its F3300 and F900 industrial FDM additive manufacturing platforms.
The 24-month project was awarded through the 2026 America Makes and U.S. Department of War Organic Industrial Base (OIB) Modernization Challenge, which supports technologies aimed at strengthening advanced manufacturing capabilities and the defense industrial base.
The project addresses one of the key challenges limiting the broader adoption of additive manufacturing in production environments: verifying part quality efficiently and consistently while generating sufficient technical data to support qualification.
Manufacturers in highly regulated sectors such as aerospace and defense currently rely heavily on post-build inspection and qualification before additively manufactured components can be deployed. This can increase both production costs and qualification times, particularly when additive manufacturing is scaled beyond individual applications.
Under the program, Stratasys will develop advanced monitoring capabilities designed to capture quality and process data during the build itself. The technology is intended to identify potential anomalies during production and generate documentation that can support subsequent quality and qualification decisions.
By moving part of the quality assurance process into the manufacturing cycle, in-situ monitoring could reduce post-build inspection requirements, shorten qualification cycles and allow manufacturers to expand additive manufacturing capacity more efficiently.
“The next phase of additive manufacturing adoption within the defense industrial base is about moving from isolated applications to qualified, scalable production,” said John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes. He noted that advancing in-situ monitoring on established polymer production platforms could help build greater confidence in the manufacturing process and provide the data required for qualification.
According to Rich Garrity, Chief Business Unit Officer at Stratasys, access to quality data during the build process can help manufacturers qualify applications with less friction, expand production capacity and integrate additive manufacturing more effectively into demanding production environments.
The capabilities developed under the project are expected to have applications beyond the U.S. defense sector, including commercial aviation and other regulated industrial markets where traceability, process control and part qualification are critical requirements.
For manufacturers considering additive manufacturing as a scalable production technology, real-time process data could represent an important step toward moving away from qualification on an application-by-application basis and toward a more repeatable production model.
credit: Stratasys
