With the goal of developing next-generation industrial additive manufacturing, materials, and processes, The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) announced on July 3 that it will open a new manufacturing innovation center in Harford County, Maryland.
“As a proven leader in advanced technology innovation development, NCMS has the unique ability to engage and work with a wide variety of partners while finding the critical infrastructure, talent, and investment for successful program and project management,” said NCMS president, Rick Jarman.
The objective for this center is to create scientific breakthroughs in metallurgy and plastics, as well as the launch of new factory machinery that will “transform the way U.S. producers make aircraft, automobiles, munitions, medical devices, and other products.”
Harford County is providing leased lab, training and administrative space for the facility at the Higher Education and Applied Technology Center or HEAT Center.
Partners of the new center include the State of Maryland, the Maryland Department of Commerce, and Harford County, Maryland, as well as founding members 3D Systems and Applied Materials.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to partner with key government and industry leaders such as Applied Materials to drive innovation and U.S. competitiveness,” said Neal Orringer, vice president, alliances & partnerships, 3D Systems.
This collaboration between government, industry, and academia will advance and build on breakthrough, non-traditional technologies to enable U.S. manufacturers with large-scale additive manufacturing, unprecedented speed in part production, novel designs and materials, dramatic cuts in cost and delivery times, and point-of-need part manufacturing.
One of the goals of the center is to provide U.S. troops with the most updated platforms and tools available. NCMS already has a relationship with the U.S. Army and will expand this connectivity to the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Army’s corporate laboratory. Through its material science research effort, ARL executes fundamental research for scientific discovery and innovative problem-solving to provide superior materials and devices needed to achieve lasting strategic land power dominance.
