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Building mission-critical applications

HAMR takes a requirements-first approach to determine the right manufacturing process for customers, transforming complex challenges into mission-critical solutions for aerospace, defense, and energy sectors.

01. Mission Driven

Bridging the gap to ensure impactful research finds real-world applications for defense and commercial needs.

02. Performance

Engineered components that meet demanding performance requirements by optimizing materials, design, and manufacturing processes.

03. Technical Capabilities

One-stop shop with the technical capability to transform concepts into reality through advanced materials, engineering, design, and manufacturing expertise.

04. Production & Scalability

From a single prototype to full-rate production, we develop manufacturing strategies that scale efficiently while maintaining quality and repeatability.

05. Cost

We evaluate every manufacturing pathway to maximize value, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.

06. Schedule

Speed matters. Our agile team accelerates production to keep your program on schedule without sacrificing quality.

Prototyping and Low Rate Production - Line drawing of a spaceship or drone above a landscape with a pathway and horizon line.

Prototyping & Low Rate Initial Production

Three white 3D-printed prototype cones on metal plates, with two smaller cones in the foreground and three taller cones in the background, on a black table against a plain wall.

Three metallic cylinders with holes around their upper edges, placed against a textured wall, on a black surface.

Flowchart illustrating a process in additive manufacturing. It shows three main stages: Post-Process, Digital Twin, and Test & Validate, with images of metal parts, simulation software, a person working with a metal component, and a 3D scan or model.

Crayfish Undersea Demonstrator Article

Undersea vehicles and systems tend to be bespoke, high-cost, and low-production-rate. HAMR has embarked on a journey to rapidly iterate through the design, development, prototyping, and manufacturing stages for undersea vehicles, systems, and platforms to provide low-cost modular alternatives.

There are several critical components within a vehicle that tend to dictate one or more of cost, lead time, or scalability. One portion of the vehicle that tends to touch on all three is the casing or body, which often relies on castings or forgings that have long lead times – and at large sizes – high costs. These factors also limit the pace of development and risk tolerance, as a design can be locked in early due to cost and schedule constraints.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is an excellent choice for rapid iteration and prototyping and enables more novel design philosophies and a more robust design cycle. Unfortunately, AM has traditionally not been well known for lowering costs or providing scalability in either part volume or part size, particularly for traditional wrought alloy systems. HAMR has performed significant development in cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) and is able to meet and exceed AMS specs for 6061-T6, and critically, can do this at high rates and for large (>20”) parts.
HAMR demonstrated the ability to leverage additive manufacturing to rapidly iterate through design and produce a concept vehicle demonstrator in less than 4 weeks.
A complete body was 3D printed in less than 36 hours using designs that have been hydrostatically pressure-tested to relevant depths.

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Expeditionary Manufacturing

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NAVSEA 05T Repair Technology Exercise

Performing repairs and rapid response manufacturing at the point of need provides a significant value to our fleet by reducing down-time, lowering or eliminating dry-dock fees, and enabling ships to remain operational.

In high-stakes operational environments, such as the battlefield, it's impossible to predict when, where, or which component will fail. The requirement is to deliver a solution that is 'good enough', as quickly as possible. Just as importantly, that solution must be developed and manufactured outside the controlled conditions of a laboratory.
The HAMR team was not given the target component until arriving at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Once on site, the team deployed a WarpSPEE3D cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) system. The system was outdoors in late January, where cold weather introduced additional environmental challenges. The damaged valve components posed the technical and logistical challenge of rapidly reverse-engineering and manufacturing a viable replacement on a compressed timeline.
A key aspect of the HAMR approach is collaboration, which is particularly important in fieldwork. The team worked with a 3D scanning partner to generate CAD files for two parts and quickly began designing for additive manufacturing. Once acceptable, the parts were sliced using SPEE3D’s proprietary CSAM slicing software, and the first print was started within hours. Day 2 of the event included printing the second component and heat treating the set.
HAMR demonstrated reverse engineering and CAD-to-part for a 316SS valve assembly in less than 48 hours.
To verify performance, the valve set was machined off-site by Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory, and subsequently passed a pressure test.

A 3D-printed object with multiple circular layers and holes, placed on a table in front of a laptop showing a 3D model on the screen, in a workspace or laboratory environment.

A scientific device or equipment with a glowing orange interior, possibly a 3D printer or an industrial furnace, enclosed within a metallic frame.

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Novel Manufacturing Solutions - A 3D cube above a circular platform with dotted lines indicating movement or projection.

Advanced Novel Solutions

A military missile defense system vehicle firing a missile at a target. The diagram shows the missile being launched from the vehicle with a laser targeting the missile, and two inset close-up views of the missile's computer sensors and guidance system.

Novel Counter Directed Energy Weapon Technology

As the fielding of high-energy lasers (HELs) becomes more common and robust, the United States must maintain an asymmetric advantage by fielding counter-directed energy weapon (C-DEW) capabilities.

Common systems for mitigating HEL damage are generally mechanical or passive absorptive systems. Mechanical solutions come with significant size, weight, and power (SWaP) penalties, while absorptive systems, though lightweight and simple, are generally one-time use and not functional for sustained mitigation, reusable vehicles, or protective equipment.
Through Army STTRs, HAMR has patented a multifunctional optical filter (US 11630371) which provides a reflective optical limiter protection capability. In reflective optical limiters, low-intensity signals pass through, enabling sensing through the filter, while high-intensity signals are rejected, providing protection for the underlying component or person. This happens nearly instantaneously through a passive mechanism, requiring minimal SWaP.
HAMR’s approach involved developing an internal modeling code capable of handling extremely high optical non-linearities, followed by the subsequent development and fabrication of novel multilayered nanostructured coatings.
The HAMR team developed several material systems and coating structure combinations with varying ranges of performance, manufacturability, and thermomechanical capability.
They then worked with partners at the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory to fabricate and characterize these reflective optical limiter structures. Finally, a HEL test cell was set up at HAMR’s Pittsburgh facility, evaluating the coatings and demonstrating its protective capabilities and robust performance under pulsed laser irradiation.

A laboratory workspace with various scientific instruments and equipment, including microscopes, optical mounts, and electronic devices, arranged on a metal perforated workbench under bright overhead lighting.

Diagram comparing low and high intensity signals in material; left side shows low signal intensity with fewer layers, right side shows high signal intensity with multiple bright layers.

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Serial Production

Aerial view of Neighborhood 91 - The Advanced Manufacturing Production Ecosystem at the Pittsburgh Airport.

Neighborhood 91 Advanced Manufacturing Production Campus

HAMR is strategically located within Neighborhood 91, a globally recognized advanced manufacturing production ecosystem at the Pittsburgh International Airport Innovation Campus. This vertically integrated manufacturing environment, combined with Pittsburgh's strong regional manufacturing base, enables HAMR to dramatically reduce costs and lead times.

Supported by the Regional Industrial Development Corporation (RIDC), the campus offers space to grow, allowing HAMR to be uniquely positioned to rapidly and efficiently scale its manufacturing footprint.

For HAMR customers, this integrated partnership provides a trusted pathway to develop, validate, and deploy mission-critical solutions at scale with reduced risk and greater speed.

Core Expertise

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Novel Materials Development

High Entropy Alloys (HEA) and Refractory HEAs
Thermal protection materials for hypersonics
Dispersion strengthened materials
High temperature ceramic and metallic composites

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Modeling and Simulation

RF, EO/IR, and combined multiphysics
Residual stress and AM process modeling
Thermomechanical deformation and wear
In-house fortran, python, and MATLAB custom codes
Commercial packages

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Advanced Manufacturing

Additive and hybrid manufacturing
Nanostructured coatings and thin films
Process development
Multilayer and functionally graded composites

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Dynamic Material Performance

High strain rate modeling
Reactive Material (RM) development
Fragmentation control
Blast testing
Direct energy testing

HAMR is committed to meeting and exceeding customer requirements by providing high-quality research, development, prototyping, and manufacturing solutions to government and commercial customers. We prioritize:

QUALITY POLICY