America Makes celebrates its 7th anniversary as Additive Manufacturing hub
September 2, 2019
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, is commemorating its 7th anniversary. Since its founding in 2012, the organisation – which is managed and operated by the US’s National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) – has served as a national accelerator for Additive Manufacturing and the first of eight Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs) established and programme-managed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as public-private partnerships.
The institute now serves as a hub for advanced manufacturing innovation, having executed eighty-eight Additive Manufacturing R&D projects executed and evolved from a community of sixty-five to more than 225 member organisations. America Makes collaborated with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on the creation and publication of the first Standardization Roadmap for AM, and has three Satellite Centers across the USA.
John Wilczynski, America Makes’ Executive Director, stated that he is inspired by the promise of the future not only for the institute but for the US manufacturing industry overall. “This is a really exciting time for the institute as we have a great deal of learnings and achievements from the last seven years,” he commented. “We are acutely aware of the needs of our industry from commercial and defence sectors.”
“We are grateful for all of the support from the DoD, Air Force Research Laboratory, and other government stakeholders,” he continued. “As the pilot Institute, we have proved that the public-private collaborative model is effective and important to the ongoing economic success of US manufacturing industry. We transitioned from the initial start-up phase and then onto an incredibly driven project execution phase to where we are today – promoting and leading innovation.”
