On Monday, the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) celebrated the grand opening of its 62,000-square-foot facility during a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Governor McDonnell. The facility is located adjacent to the 1,000-acre Rolls-Royce Crosspointe Campus in Prince George County, Va.

CCAM brings together Virginia’s leading manufacturing companies and top educational institutions in order to expedite research and turn ideas into real-world technologies and solutions. The research center focuses on two areas—surface engineering and manufacturing systems. 

The facility received its full certificate of occupancy in September 2012 and has grown to include 15 manufacturing companies—Canon Virginia Inc., Chromalloy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, Sandvik Coromant, Siemens, Sulzer Metco, Aerojet, Hermle Machine Company, Mitutoyo, TurboCombustor Technology Inc., Buehler, Cool Clean Technologies, GF AgieCharmilles, and Blaser Swisslube.

In addition, the three founding universities are Virginia State University, Virginia Tech, and University of Virginia, which collectively have 50 students completing internships at CCAM.

The applied research center includes a 16,000-square-foot high bay area, five machining labs, five computational labs, a 3-D visualization lab, conference rooms, and open and modular workstations. CCAM is currently hiring and expects to have more than 100 employees made up of engineers, scientists and analysts.

According to Governor McDonnell, CCAM is a “one-of-a-kind asset.” The collaborative nature of the facility and its ability to bridge the gap between research and commercialization is expected to advance Virginia as a hub of advanced manufacturing. 

To learn more about CCAM, visit www.ccam-va.com, and to find out more about Virginia’s advanced manufacturing capabilities across the Commonwealth, click here.

Governor McDonnell is joined (left to right) by Dr. Mike Beffel, CCAM Interim President & Executive Director, and Armand Lauzon, CCAM Board Chair, at the CCAM Grand Opening event in Prince George County, Va.

The Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) received its full certificate of occupancy and opened its facility in Prince George County, Va., this September. CCAM has been steadily growing both in members and machinery and is expected to host a grand opening event in spring 2013.

CCAM has added three Tier 2 and three Tier 3 industry members over the last few months, bringing the total number of participating companies to 14.

The applied research center includes a high bay area, five machining labs, five computational labs, a visualization lab, meeting rooms with conferencing ability, open and modular workstations, and a cafeteria.

With participation from its industry partners and university members, engineers at the center are currently working on 10 research projects. One project involves adaptive machining, which uses specialized equipment to measure and make adjustments in real time as components are being manufactured, leading to improved performance and lower costs.

Another project incorporates multi-modal part inspection, which uses imagery to obtain information and identify small defects early in the manufacturing process, allowing any issues to be fixed before entering into high-rate production.

CCAM is another example of the public-private partnership between Virginia’s leading universities and world-class manufacturing companies to bring real-world solutions to the market more quickly. To learn more about CCAM, visit www.ccam-va.com.

CCAM’s high bay area includes a Laser Powder Deposition Machine and the Sulzer Metco Thermal Spray Cell, pictured below.

Chromalloy, one of seven Organizing Members of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM), announced its sponsorship of an industrial casting seminar for Virginia State University students. Chromalloy is a leading supplier of repairs, replacements parts and maintenance for gas turbines used in the aviation industry.

This program is one of the first educational initiatives launched through CCAM, an applied research center that partners top Virginia universities with leading Virginia manufacturers.

The three-day seminar is designed to educate engineering students on the latest techniques used in the casting manufacturing process. VSU students will learn a variety of processes, including wax injection and the assembly of molds, investment, pouring, and final part finishing, as well as proprietary processes developed by Chromalloy.

Located on Rolls-Royce’s Crosspointe Campus in Prince George County, Va., CCAM represents a public-private collaboration offering faster commercialization of technologies for Virginia companies and enhanced educational opportunities for Virginia’s students. Research partners include Virginia State University, University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, and manufacturing partners include Canon Virginia Inc., Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, Sandvik Coromant, Siemens, and Sulzer Metco.

CCAM is one example of Virginia’s commitment to innovation. Home to 11 Federally Funded R&D Centers and 19 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Laboratories, including DARPA and NASA Langley Research Center, click here to learn why companies continue to select the Commonwealth as a leader in technology.

Virginia’s Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) recently won a 2012 Manufacturing Leadership 100 Award (ML100) in the category of New Workforce. The awards are presented by Manufacturing Executive, a division of Thomas Publishing LLC of New York.

Created eight years ago, the ML100 Awards recognize excellence, innovation and transformational projects in the field of manufacturing. The New Workforce category seeks to honor companies that “have come up with innovative ways to bring new workers with critically needed new skills into the workplace, and to allow them to productively collaborate with and learn from existing knowledge experts. Winning projects, for example, will involve education and training, knowledge management and transfer, and collaboration with educational institutions,” according to Manufacturing Executive.

The award criteria is a near perfect description of CCAM, which brings together leading manufacturing companies and top educational institutions to collaborate and develop new technologies that result in a more efficient manufacturing process. Canon Virginia Inc., Chromalloy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, Sandvik Coromant and Siemens are a few of the market leading companies that participate in the program with the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University. CCAM’s research efforts focus on developing solutions for surface engineering and manufacturing systems. Research is already underway in labs at UVA and Virginia Tech while CCAM's 60,000 square-foot, high-technology facility is expected to open in September 2012 in Prince George County, Va.

To learn more about Virginia’s internationally recognized R&D facilities and why companies choose Virginia for its access to cutting-edge research and technology, click here.