Fab Lab Hub is pleased to announce that an agreement was recently signed with America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, for Silver Level membership. Since its inception in 2012, the national accelerator for additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP) has worked with member manufacturers, researchers, universities, government labs, non-profits and a myriad of other organizations to lead the world in this growing technology area.
America Makes was established as an initiative of the Obama administration and is based in Youngstown, Ohio, the heart of American manufacturing history. The public-private partnership is the flagship Institute for Manufacturing USA, the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, and is a repository of knowledge, as well as best practices for additive manufacturing. America Makes fosters innovation in the advanced manufacturing sector, and manages a portfolio of more than $80 million in public and private funds for members to advance the state-of-the-art in AM and 3DP.
Fab Lab Hub’s membership in America Makes will strengthen each organizations’ workforce development programs. America Makes has collaborations with Tooling U-SME, the workforce development arm of SME . Together they have launched a portfolio of additive manufacturing learning and development solutions that includes access to specialized training packages, apprenticeship programs and the industry’s first certification. 3D Veterans, a Google-funded training program aimed at providing additive manufacturing training for vets, is another America Makes partner in workforce training for the next generation of manufacturing tools.
Fab Lab Hub has worked with a number of community colleges in the Fab Lab Network on digital fabrication certification and apprenticeship programs that include additive manufacturing as well as other technologies. We are also initiating a national training center at the Santa Fe Business Incubator in Santa Fe, New Mexico to train instructors, managers and facilitators in digital fabrication. This national program features AM equipment from MakerBot, Ultimaker, 3D Print Life, and Formlabs, as well as design software Fusion 360 from Autodesk.
America Makes will be presenting and exhibiting at our DigiFab Conference, March 27 and 28, 2018 in Schaumburg, IL just outside Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The Conference, which explores how digital fabrication like 3D Printing is changing the world, will be co-located this year with the Laser Institute of America’s Laser Additive Manufacturing conference and Lasers in Manufacturing Event.
Watch this space for more upcoming collaborations with America Makes, as we work together to add AM technology to the factory floor.