YOUNGSTOWN — America Makes, the national additive manufacturing accelerator in Youngstown, has signed a new seven-year, $322 million agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory to continue America Makes’ mission.

The agreement calls for America Makes, part of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining, to continue to employ its public-private model and improve upon it to strengthen and refine the institute’s effectiveness.

America Makes’ Executive Director John Wilczynski said the agreement “marks a monumental milestone” and signifies a high level of confidence by the research laboratory.

“We have worked tirelessly together with the America Makes membership community during the last seven years and two previous cooperative agreements with AFRL to execute our mission of advancing the adoption of additive manufacturing,” Wilczynski said. “We have moved well beyond our initial pilot start-up phase and a project phase driven by consortium developed roadmaps to become the recognized voice of our industry.”

The deal was finalized Nov. 26, but announced Monday on the opening day of the Defense Manufacturing Conference 2019 in Phoenix.

America Makes manages a portfolio of more than $215 million in public and private funds invested in advancing additive manufacturing in the U.S. With the additional funding, that number in the next seven years will increase to more than a half of a billion dollars.

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