The
MTC in Coventry has joined the Digitally Enabled Competitive and Sustainable Additive Manufacturing (DECSAM) project. Led by
Airbus, this £38 million, four-year UK aerospace programme will develop and deploy the latest additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, such as beam shaping and in-situ process monitoring, to make metal laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) AM more cost-effective, productive and sustainable for flight-ready parts. The project, which runs until June 2028 is a research and innovation project funded through Innovate UK, the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and the UK Department for Business and Trade.
The project brings together 11 leading organisations covering aerospace OEMs, Tier 1 and 2 suppliers, SMEs and research institutes, providing full UK AM manufacturing chain coverage. The partners led by Airbus Operations Ltd, includes Renishaw plc, ASTM International UK, Authentise Ltd, MTC Ltd, GKN Aerospace Services Ltd, Additive Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, APEX Additive Technologies Ltd, Domin Ltd, the University of Sheffield, and ToffeeX Ltd.
Jacqueline Castle, chief technology officer at the Aerospace Technology Institute, said: “AM can unlock new efficiencies in aerospace, lowering costs, optimising material use, reducing weight, and consolidating complex assemblies into single parts. DECSAM unites a strong consortium to accelerate adoption in civil aerospace, aligning closely with the ATI’s AM strategy to drive future economic growth and sustainability.
DECSAM will demonstrate an integrated, digitally connected AM supply chain, from alloy selection and build strategies to post-processing, inspection and factory scale-up. “In order to demonstrate AMs future cost competitiveness for aerospace applications.”
DECSAM aims to cut part cost, raise quality, and shorten design-build-test loops for aerospace applications, and is structured around four innovation pillars: performance — new and improved alloys, multi-physics modelling and physics-driven design; productivity — high-power lasers, beam shaping, advanced scan strategies, in-situ monitoring and closed-loop control; scalability — end-to-end digital thread, automated sustainable factory concepts, and efficient post-processing/inspection; and application — integration of technologies developed to demonstrate overall cost benefit on target product applications.
Accelerating industrial exploitationPlanned outputs include ground and flight-test demonstrators, validated recycled/re-purposed powder routes, widened powder specifications, verified parameter themes for quality and throughput, in-process monitoring software offerings, and guidance for routes to qualification and certification, all targeted at accelerating industrial exploitation.
Dr David Brackett, the MTC’s chief engineer – digital engineering, said: “As the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing, we are excited to help improve the cost-competitiveness of the technology so that it can be scaled and adopted more widely across the UK's aerospace industry. This large programme is an opportunity to make a major step forward towards this and we are proud to be playing a central role in its delivery and working with excellent partners.”
L-PBF is flight-proven, but wider uptake is constrained by end-to-end productivity gaps, fragmented data/QA, and reliance on overseas steps (powder, HIP, advanced heat-treat). DECSAM closes those gaps by linking UK materials supply, machine capability, in-process quality assurance, a robust digital thread, and factory scale-up—so parts are repeatable, cost-competitive, and producible at volume in the UK, supporting Net Zero 2050.
The programme is business-case led: recycled/UK-made powders; optimised build and nesting; in-process monitoring with closed-loop control to reduce or eliminate HIP/CT where feasible; and parameter/alloy development to cut finishing time. Cost-modelled demonstrators (an aircraft floor beam) show the shift from today’s ‘as-is’ to a digitally connected, production-ready ‘to-be’ at a cost point which enables AM to buy its way into serial aerospace production.
Focus use cases include ultra-efficient wing and engine structures and hydrogen sub systems (conformal heat exchangers, fuel-cell manifolds). Alongside performance gains, DECSAM mitigates single-source casting risks, on-shores critical pre-form manufacture, and advances compact AM-enabled actuation toward power-by-wire—delivering more right-first-time, certifiable parts, shorter lead times, a resilient UK supply chain, and cleaner aerospace manufacturing.