America Makes is the nation’s leading public-private partnership for additive manufacturing (AM) technology and education. America Makes members from industry, academia, government, workforce, and economic development organizations, work together to accelerate the adoption of AM and the nation’s global manufacturing competitiveness. Founded in 2012 as the Department of Defense’s national manufacturing innovation institute for AM and first of the Manufacturing USA network, America Makes is based in Youngstown, Ohio, and managed by the not-for-profit National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM).

“Healthy competition means joining the same sports league. There is still competition, but it is organized around common goals, which drives everyone to improve. America Makes brings that to Additive Manufacturing,” says Earl Good, Retech Managing Director/President.

Contributions

The Retech team looks forward to contributing their 60 years of accumulated wisdom and experience in vacuum metallurgy, including over twenty years of experience manufacturing vacuum atomization technology, with their additive manufacturing colleagues in industry, government, and academia.

Benefits

Much like the additive manufacturing process itself, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aggregating many small organizations and individuals together is a lot more functional once they are bonded together to form a common purpose. The opportunities for networking and collaboration in support of the America Makes mission will benefit the entire US domestic AM industry, Retech included.

Earl concluded “we see this membership as having many overall benefits for Retech, for example, the time and effort Retech invests in strengthening academic programs in AM, will pay dividends in the form of more graduates with the skills we are looking for and potentially create more uses for our vacuum melting equipment.”