Air Force boosts funding for technology using artificial intelligence for 3D manufacturing

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - 3D manufacturing technology from a Purdue University-affiliated company may soon play an even bigger part in helping the Department of Defense manage its digital assets to protect the United States. Imaginestics LLC, a software company headquartered in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette, has received a $1.5 million SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Phase II grant through the U.S. Air Force. The award comes after the company was hired in 2017 to create a new system for the Air Force to better manage additive manufacturing (AM). "Imaginestics' mission is to build artificial intelligence-powered solutions for managing digital assets, which aligns perfectly with the needs of the Air Force," said Jamie Tan, CEO and co-founder of Imaginestics. Jason Mann, additive manufacturing technical lead for the 76th CMXG Reverse Engineering and Critical Tooling (REACT) lab at Tinker Air Force Base, said, "Imaginestics is building an Additive Manufacturing Advisory System (AMAS) that will provide the Air Force with a method of effectively storing, manipulating and presenting AM data in a form useful to AM engineers. It will provide provenance for AM parts, the ability to see trends in AM equipment performance, and manage the workflow for AM and reverse engineering tasks. Hosting the software on the AWS GovCloud will allow other depots to utilize the software to share AM data between all organizations involved in AM, while also supporting downstream processes that go with AM to minimize depot maintenance cost."