ITAMCO Attends White House Event
They are recognized for their progress in the Manufacturing USA program.
Posted: January 6, 2017
ITAMCO (Plymouth, IN), a manufacturer of precision machined components specializing in gears, recently attended an event at the White House hosted by the National Economic Council (NEC) that was held in recognition of the progress made by ITAMCO and other U.S. manufacturers in the Manufacturing USA (Gaithersburg, MD) program. Daniel Neidig, their vice president, and Joel Neidig, their business development and technology manager, represented the company at the event.
“It was an honor for us to be invited by President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, to participate in the emerging technology event held at the White House,” said Daniel Neidig. “Since our early beginnings over 60 years ago, enhancing our industrial competitiveness through advanced manufacturing initiatives has always been an essential principal of our philosophy. Collaborating with various departments of the government and universities is a key strength of our organization. We look forward to being a stakeholder in Manufacturing USA and are excited to help solve industry-relevant manufacturing challenges in the future.”
Formally established in 2014, Manufacturing USA brings together industry, academia, and federal partners within a network of advanced manufacturing institutes. The program was created to increase U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and promote a robust and sustainable national manufacturing research and development infrastructure.
Manufacturing USA consists of multiple linked Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. ITAMCO is an active member of two of these institutes: America Makes: The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (Youngstown, OH) and the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII; Chicago, IL).
ITAMCO is part of a team consisting of Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, NJ), the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Pittsburgh that was awarded an R&D fund by America Makes to commercialize the results of their work on additive manufacturing (AM). The group’s project is titled Parametric Design of Functional Support Structures for Metal Alloy Feedstocks. The team’s mission is to codify the design rules for support structures used in direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) — an AM process — and to inform and then automatically recommend the ideal part orientation and designs for optimized supports.
Currently during part builds, support structures are not only essential to laying part foundations and providing structural support, but are critical to eliminating part warp during powder recoating and improving heat extraction. However, few rules exist for designing these support structures. Moreover, while AM machine tool software packages have the ability to add support structures, these existing capabilities are fairly primitive and do not take into consideration part orientation, distortion, or heat extraction uniformity. The technology group will take the results of the team’s work and write a plug-in application for Autodesk, a 3D-design software program.
ITAMCO is also part of a team that received an Applied Research and Development award from the DMDII. The other partners in the project are Palo Alto Research Center (PARC; Palo Alto, CA), MTConnect® Institute (McLean, VA), and System Insights (Emeryville, CA). Their award-winning project is titled Standards-Based Platform for Enterprise Communication Enabling Optimal Production and Self-Awareness (or SPEC-OPS). The goal of SPEC-OPS is to make Smart Manufacturing a reality by connecting and configuring diverse machine tools, PLCs, sensors, and devices on the shop floor.
ITAMCO is the implementation site of SPEC-OPS because the MTConnect standard already connects many of their machine tools. “We will have a totally integrated shop floor,” noted Joel Neidig. “A job will be entered into our ERP system and then every piece of the job, from allocating materials, to manufacturing, to shipping and invoicing, will be automatically routed through the entire facility. Machines will be chosen based on the type of work and availability. And SPEC-OPS is dynamic — if a machine goes down, the job will be automatically rerouted. Manufacturing USA has given small- to medium-size enterprises like us the opportunity to work along with larger public and privately held companies and universities to develop the latest technologies. The projects we’re developing now wouldn’t have happened without this program.”