The National Armaments Consortium (NAC) is the industry and academia component of the Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC), and serves as the primary organization enabling the US government, industry and academia to deliver rapid armaments innovation for the security of the United States. Originally, DOTC was commissioned by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics as a US Department of Defense (DoD) initiative. The goal of the consortium was to facilitate collaborative government, industry and academic ordnance technology development and prototyping.
Nowadays, the mission of DOTC is to enable the DoD Ordnance community to work collaboratively in RDT&E of prototype solutions to advance and transition ordnance systems, subsystems and component technologies.
The newest member of the NAC is Senvol, a company that provides data to help companies implement additive manufacturing. Its services include the Senvol Database, a comprehensive database of industrial additive manufacturing machines and materials; the Senvol API, which provides raw access to the Senvol Database; and the Senvol Indexes, pedigreed data sets for additive manufacturing material characterization. Senvol also offers the Senvol SOP, a standard operating procedure that details how to generate pedigreed additive manufacturing data, and the Senvol ML, a software suite that helps companies quickly characterize or qualify additive manufacturing materials and processes.
“We’re pleased to join the National Armaments Consortium and look forward to contributing to the advancement of armament technologies in the United States,” said Senvol President Zach Simkin. “Senvol is the leader in data for additive manufacturing, and we’re eager to support the consortium’s mission through the use of additive manufacturing analytics.”
Government participants in DOTC include US Army AMRDEC, Naval Surface Warfare Centers, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Naval Air Systems Command. Technological areas of focus for DOTC include Ammunition, Demilitarization, Directed Energy Warfare, Enabling Technologies, Energetic Materials, Fuzes, Joint Insensitive Munitions, Protection & Survivability, Rockets, Missiles and Bombs, Sensors & Sensor Systems, Warheads Lethal Mechanisms, and Weapon Systems.
Recently, Senvol began developing additive manufacturing software for the US Office of Naval Research, and its membership in the NAC further advances the company’s status as a provider of AM data services to national security interests, not just private companies. Senvol is a Gold Member of America Makes, and its executives have been appointed to multiple leadership positions including as members of SME’s Additive Manufacturing Advisory Board, the ASTM International F42 Committee on Additive Manufacturing Technologies, ASME’s Technical Advisory Panel for additive manufacturing, and also as Vice Chair of the Data Management Committee for SAE.
NYC-based Senvol’s products and services have been used by a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in a range of industries such as aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, and consumer products.
In other weaponry news, you may recall Cody Wilson, who has been embroiled in a legal battle ever since he first published the open source files for his 3D printed handgun on the Internet. He was ordered by the State Department to remove the files, which he did, but then filed a lawsuit against the State Department claiming that it was violating his right to free speech, among other rights. After a long, drawn-out battle, it looked as though Wilson was going to lose his case.
However, things took a turn in his favor a couple of months ago when the Department of Justice offered Wilson a settlement. Confirmed in court documents this month, the settlement promises to change the export control rules surrounding any firearm below .50 caliber, with exceptions for fully automatic weapons and rare gun designs that use caseless ammunition, and hand over their regulation to the Commerce Department, giving Wilson freedom to publish data about his gun designs anywhere online. You can learn more about the case with in-depth coverage from Wired.
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