FABRICATING the future RAPIDTECH TRAINS TOMORROW’S WORKFORCE IN ADVANCED MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES | by Janet Wilson
“We hope to be one of the few universities capable of providing engineers with an understanding of their individual disciplines and, on top of that, who have an understanding of how things are made – literally from doing it themselves – so they can walk into companies and be commercially productive from Day One.”
Ed Tackett whirls through the fourth floor of UC Irvine’s Engineering Hall, showing off tiny toy figurines, a bright-red leg bone, a waxen skull and more. “We’re just finishing the housing for a ‘non-squish’ breast cancer detector,” he says, looking at freshly painted soft-pink components. Student intern Garritt Ong, looks on, hefting a block of resin to begin a project of his own. “I love it; I’m learning everything about everything,” he says enthusiastically. All of the items on display and hundreds more have been designed on computers and produced via three-dimensional printing at the National Center for Rapid Technologies, or RapidTech, the only nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated to hands-on training of community college and university students in the next wave of advanced manufacturing. Forget the Industrial Revolution and tool-and-die factory assembly lines. While custom 3-D printers are gaining popularity in home handyman projects, the printers here are industrial-strength, and so is the mission. It’s a campus version of the supply chain of the future, academics and other experts say, and key to bringing full-fledged manufacturing back to this nation. President Obama is seeking $1 billion in next year’s federal budget to make the U.S. a world leader in advanced manufacturing. “This is an extraordinarily exciting time, characterized by many as a third manufacturing revolution. Technologies like additive manufacturing are changing the rules,” says Mike Molnar, director of the National Institute of Standards & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Office. “Just as computing evolved from mainframe data centers to personal devices, in the future, if you have an idea, you will be able to make it.” Samueli School of Engineering • UC Irvine
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