The Re-VAMMP program aims to increase the adoption of metal additive manufacturing (AM) of Virginia’s defense industrial base (DIB), particularly in small and medium size independent machine shops.
The defense industrial base faces a continuous modernization challenge to ensure that the United States warfighter always maintains superior advantage in a theater of war. Reliance on legacy systems in conjunction with supply-chain bottlenecks has delayed investment and innovation in advanced manufacturing technologies. Consequently, a critical need exists to adopt and implement digital manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing (AM), to reduce cost, improve reliability, and implement new capabilities.
Department of Defense (DoD) depots, shipyards, and arsenals as well as its prime contractors rely heavily on independent machine shops with little modern infrastructure to manufacture parts for weapon systems. These machine shops form the backbone of the Defense manufacturing supply-chain but, in general, do not have the expertise and capabilities to produce parts with AM. The lack of adoption of AM technologies by independent machine shops weakens the Defense manufacturing supply-chain, slows innovation and technological advancement of weapons systems and, ultimately, creates a national security challenge.