3D Printing

New York Universities to Open Additive Manufacturing R&D Center

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/05/16

Three universities will be working with corporate partners to open and run a center dedicated to additive manufacturing and functional printing. The new center will be based at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) but will draw researchers and students from two other schools vested in the technology, Clarkson University and State University of New York, New Paltz.

All three will benefit from an annual grant of $921,000 from New York state's economic development agency, Empire State Development. That funding will continue for a decade. RIT is also receiving $500,000 to help construct a new facility to house the equipment, some of which already exists on campus as part of the College of Engineering, and some of which will be acquired over the next several years.

The new Additive Manufacturing (AM) Print Center for Advanced Technology will conduct research and development in 3D printing and additive manufacturing, an industry that's seen as an important economic driver for the region. The center will be led by RIT's Denis Cormier, an RIT professor of industrial and systems engineering. Corporate partners in the initiative will include Xerox, GE Research, Corning, Eastman Kodak and MakerBot.

Research partners in the consortium will be able to use the facility's equipment to work on development projects for creating next-generation polymer, metal and composite technologies and synthesizing advanced functional materials, developing additive manufacturing technologies, designing novel devices using the new materials and technologies and determining how best to commercialize the new materials, processes and applications.

"We believe additive manufacturing can become a signature industry in our regional economy, and we expect this center to contribute to significant advances in these technologies," said RIT President, Bill Destler, in a prepared statement.