NASA & EOS Forge Additive Manufacturing Master Class for Space Hardware

Image from EOS

What's Announced

On August 6, 2025 the company EOS signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to launch a “Metal AM Master Class” training program in advanced metal additive manufacturing for aerospace and space hardware applications.

It will cover laser powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition methods, and post-processing, finally preparing engineers to bring 3D-printed metal parts into flight systems. The program signals a growing focus on materials/manufacturing education tied to aerospace hardware infusion.

Why Materials Science Applications in Aerospace Mechanisms Matter

The mechanisms in aerospace-deployable, latches, hinges, actuator brackets-increasingly integrate complex geometry and material behavior that depends on additive manufacturing. The infusion of printed metal parts into flight hardware has meant that material science-printability, microstructure, fatigue life, and thermal behavior-is now directly linked with mechanical subsystem design. Training engineers in cross-domain skills will be a guarantee that the aerospace mechanisms of tomorrow can be built, qualified, and sustained.

First, mechanical designers should design with the assumption that the parts are to be printed and create designs exploiting the geometry freedom while respecting material idiosyncrasies (anisotropy, print defects, post-processing). Second, aerospace materials engineers and mechanical engineers should work closely so that mechanism design, load paths, fatigue requirements, and manufacturing constraints all align. Third, this development suggests a shift in aerospace mechanism design: the “material/manufacture” piece will be embedded early in the mechanical architecture rather than added afterward.