Origin Chosen to Participate in the 2020 USAF RSO Advanced Manufacturing Olympics

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Origin, the developer of the leading open 3D Printer for additive mass production, Origin One, announced today it has been selected to participate in the U.S. Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office's (RSO) inaugural Advanced Manufacturing Olympics and will compete in the Approval Sprints Technical Challenge. The Advanced Manufacturing Olympics is a free, virtual event held from October 20-23, 2020. The event includes five Technical Challenges that feature additive manufacturing and reverse engineering.

The joint team is comprised of top engineers from Origin, as well as engineering software company nTopology, and the consulting engineering company Stress Engineering Services. The team will be competing in the Approval Sprints Technical Challenge where they will be up against other highly capable teams to design, analyze, and deliver final, production-quality printed USAF flight components, a technical data package, and an accelerated qualification strategy for full approval of proposed materials, machines and complete family of components.

"There is a pressing need to rapidly deploy engineering solutions for US Air Force fleet and infrastructure sustainment," said Ian Muceus, Director of Government Programs at Origin. "We are excited to be one of the companies selected to participate in this challenge and use our advanced additive manufacturing technology to help with these obsolescence and sustainment challenges by identifying innovative strategies for rapidly designing, qualifying, and deploying solutions that leverage new manufacturing processes, materials, and components."

This challenge involved developing an F-16 hydraulic line clamp, of which the Air Force has thousands of unique clamps across its fleet. The requirements for the challenge were complex and looked at dimensional accuracy, stresses/loads, flammability compliance, temperature ratings (low and high), jet fuel exposure, vibration tolerance, hydraulic fluid exposure, and engine oil exposure. Origin tested a number of different materials, printed test fixtures, and conducted multi-material printing. The part submitted by the team for this challenge was designed on nTopology, uses Loctite 3955, a flame-retardant chemically-resistant material from Henkel, is manufactured on the Origin One 3D printer, and validated by Stress Engineering Services. 

The top component design that meets the minimum specified requirements will be eligible for installation and a one-time flight on an F-16 during the Additive Manufacturing Olympics. To find out more about the event, follow along, and watch the final results, visit: the Approval Sprints information page.

About Origin
Based in San Francisco, CA, Origin is pioneering the concept of Open Additive Manufacturing, a new way to build based on open materials, extensible software, and modular hardware. Origin One, the company's manufacturing-grade 3D printer, uses programmable photopolymerization to precisely control light, heat, and force among other variables to produce parts with exceptional accuracy and consistency. The company works with a network of material partners to develop a wide range of commercial-grade materials for its system, resulting in some of the toughest and most resilient materials in additive manufacturing. The company was founded in 2015 and is led by alumni from Google and Apple. Investors include Floodgate, DCM, Mandra Capital, Haystack, TDK Ventures, Stanford University, and Joe Montana. Learn more about Origin here: https://www.origin.io 

SOURCE Origin