NAMII Open House Shows Potential of 3-D Printing
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Kathleen Mumaw was amazed at what she saw at the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute.
Having heard about NAMII from Darrell Wallace, NAMII’s deputy director of workforce and educational outreach and associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Youngstown State University, she saw the open house Thursday evening as an “excellent opportunity” to learn more.
“It’s just amazing,” said Mumaw, an accounting and finance instructor at YSU. “The more we can learn about this, the more we can apply. It’s a great opportunity."
The open house, which is among several events tied into today’s commemoration of National Manufacturing Day, provided an opportunity for the public to see what is going on at NAMII, which opened just over a year ago.
“We wanted the community to see what we’re doing, see the equipment, see some of the education space with all the whiteboards around the facility, just get a better sense of what we’re doing to advance the state of the art for advanced manufacturing,” said Ed Morris, NAMII director.
Visitors were taken on tours and shown 3-d printers ranging from small desktop devices that cost under $2,000 to sophisticated scanning devices that could be used to reverse engineer parts and the $750,000 Renishaw AM250 laser melting system, which is used for laser sintering of powdered metal. Additive manufacturing doesn’t replace traditional subtractive processes but adds to the portfolio of manufacturing capabilities, Morris emphasized.
NAMII is working with companies on “a multitude on projects,” he noted. “A lot of companies are saying, ‘I need to understand this.’ As they understand it, they’re seeing applications for their product line. They’re seeing it for their future product capabilities and manufacturing capabilities.”
Additive manufacturing, although a new concept to many people in the Mahoning Valley, already is making its mark in industry. The 3-D printing process offers a cost advantage for creating devices that would be too expensive to produce using other methods, said Carl Avers, chairman and CEO of Youngstown Thermal LLC, who attended the open house.
Youngstown Thermal is in discussions with NAMII to have a small engine produced using additive manufacturing. “It’s the wave of the future for manufacturing,” Avers remarked.
Rick Pollack, founder of MakerGear, a Beachwood company that makes 3-D printers, demonstrated his company’s third-generation device, which costs $1,775, or with options just under $2,000. MakerGear, founded in 2009, began manufacturing the printers in 2010.
“We have a fairly broad range of customers,” Pollack said. They include schools and universities that want printers for educational purposes, engineers and computer scientists who either want them for their work or have hobbies such as robotics or radio-controlled aircraft, artists who do one-of-a-kind pieces, and small businesses interested in rapid prototyping or short-run production.
The open house attracted a broad range of visitors, said Kevin Collier manager of the NAMII Innovation Factory, who led tours of the center. “They come in with one set of expectations and through the various technologies that we’re presenting them, they’re leaving with a whole different perception. There’s a bit of a wow factor.”
Questions centered on what can be done with the parts produced by the machines, what materials can be used and the cost, Collier said.
“It’s really neat,” said Kody Kojima, 12, who came with his father, Jun, an engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and his two brothers. Kojima was so intrigued that he hopes to someday work in a place that employs 3-D printing. He sees aviation equipment as a natural application for the technology.
Chris Steward, a high school student who visited NAMII with the Kojima family, said he saw how making anything with multiple processes can be simplified using additive manufacturing. “I would definitely be interested in writing programs for machines to make parts,” he said.
Jeff Adler, a municipal court judge in Girard, said he brought his wife and two children to the event to see if the children would be interested in working with the technology in the future.
NAMII’s Wallace, during panels held at the three-hour open house, discussed the potential for the technology to not only change manufacturing but who can be a manufacturer. Traditional manufacturing requires major capital investment and a substantial customer base to justify that investment, he noted. While it is easy to make 10 of something, making 100 is harder and 1,000 is “incredibly difficult,” but it becomes easier around one million, he said.
“Additive stretches the top down and the bottom up. It allows us to close that gap a little bit,” Wallace remarked. “It also allows people who are not traditionally thought of as manufacturers to be manufacturers.”
The technology has the potential to change the model for large manufacturers as well, he added. Rather than a company producing an item and shipping it, an individual with a 3-D printer could simply purchase the instructions from the company and produce it himself.
“Imagine the difference in the business model between could Blockbuster and Netflix. That’s the kind of change in model we’re looking at,” Wallace said. “It’s Netflix for stuff.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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