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From the Web: Luring a $100 million facility; R2D2; fab lab; and metals make American manufacturing

  1. Talk about trying to land the big fish. Columbiana, Ohio, officials are hoping to attract a state-of-the-art metal fabricating plant to a 90-acre site in the area.

    For the last eight months, officials with the city, neighboring Fairfield Township, Columbiana County, and others have been talking with executives of AMP Corporation, trying to lure a $100 million dollar facility.

    “It could bring up to 120 jobs over the next three to four years,” Columbiana City Manager Lance Willard said. “High paying jobs, so we’re pretty excited about that.”

    If all falls into place, the new plant could be operating in 2017.

  2. A father and son from Jamul, Calif., have fabricated a Disney-approved R2D2.

    The rolling, beeping, top-spinning, illuminated robot created by Greg Schumsky and his 18-year-old son, Connor, cruised the halls of Comic-Con in San Diego.

    The Schumskys spent $1,500 fabricating the droid from plastic, metal, and resin. It weighs about 150 pounds and is remotely controlled by cell phone.

  3. Practicing what it preaches, the Rockford, Ill.-based Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA) has partnered with Harper College, Palatine, Ill., to construct a new $1,5 million facility designed to create critically needed skilled workers for area manufacturers and related businesses.

    The new 6,000 square foot FMA Metal Fabrication Lab, funded in part by a $500,000 grant from the FMA, will double the size of Harper’s current manufacturing lab.

    The expanded facility will train up to 600 students annually and will house state of the art equipment such as lasers, turrets, press brakes, and robotic welders. Some of the equipment will be donated by FMA members.

  4. Like many other industrial U.S. cities, Pittsburgh’s manufacturing sector was decimated by jobs moving offshore and the economic downturn, but things are looking up.

    The U.S. Department of Commerce has named the Pittsburgh area one of 12 parts of the country to join the “Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership,” an initiative promising federal support for economic development in regional manufacturing.

    The Pittsburgh area joins San Antonio; southern Louisiana; Madison, Wis.; Memphis, Tenn.; Peoria, Ill.; Minneapolis; south-central Idaho; north-central Utah; Oregon and southwest Washington; Hartford, Conn.; and Fresno, Calif., in access to more than $1 billion in assistance.

    The designation doesn’t deliver any dollars, per se, but it makes them available in the form of future grants. As a result, Pittsburgh is projected to add 14,000 new skilled jobs in metal manufacturing over the next 10 years and achieve 2 percent annual growth.

    “In Pittsburgh, manufacturing is both part of our history and our future,” said Petra Mitchell, president and CEO of Catalyst Connection, the company that presented Pittsburgh’s application. “With IMCP support, we will remind the world that Greater Pittsburgh makes metals, and metals make American manufacturing.”

  5. Faith in 3-D printing continues to spawn research. Among the latest entities to jump on the 3-D bandwagon is the University of Louisville, which is getting set to officially open its UL Additive Manufacturing Competency Center (AMCC) in October.

    The 10,000 sq. ft. AMCC, a collaboration between global safety science organization UL and the University will be “a hub for students and professionals to gain training in 3-D printing and advanced manufacturing for metals.

    “What we’re focused on is building the safety and quality infrastructure for building 3-D printing and manufacturing,” says Simin Zhou, vice president of digital manufacturing technologies at UL. “But to ensure scalability, you have to have a well-trained workforce.”

    The University of Louisville’s experience with metals manufacturing goes back more than 20 years, when it established the on-campus Rapid Prototyping Center in 1993 and became the first U.S. university to purchase selective laser sintering (SLS) equipment.