Air Liquide inaugurates Advanced Fabrication Center at its Delaware campus

At the opening of the Advanced Fabrication Center were (left to right) Ron Stark, Airgas senior VP, sales and marketing; Olivier Letessier, Air Liquide VP, R&D; Francois Darchis, Air Liquide senior VP and executive committee member; Michael Graff, Air Liquide executive VP and executive committee member; Pascal Vinet, Airgas CEO and Air Liquide executive committee member; Andy Cichocki, Airgas COO; and Bertrand Masselot, president, Air Liquide Canada.

Gas provider Air Liquide and its U.S. subsidiary, Airgas, have opened the Advanced Fabrication Center (AFC) at the Air Liquide Delaware Innovation Campus in Newark, Del. The center focuses on helping metal fabricators adopt new manufacturing technologies and more efficient, cost-effective production processes. It will deliver a continuous flow of development projects, including affiliate operation support, key innovations, and exploratory R&D.

The center involves customers and industrial collaborators early in the innovation process to address technological challenges, from finding optimal process gas compositions to process efficiency and the operation’s safety, health, and sustainability.

The AFC features R&D studios equipped for specialized research and staffed with experts who will be dedicated to key segments such as welding and cutting, digitization and visualization, additive manufacturing, cryo-assisted manufacturing, and robotic and cobotic automation. It is open to OEMs to test equipment and serves as a collaboration space for end users, OEMs, and academic and research institutes to help develop and optimize new fabrication technologies.