Manufacturing heavyweights going for big grant, big plans

LIMA - Seemingly disparate parts - a customized dishwasher front, a car frame, a military helicopter piece - would share a common manufacturing with a transformative technology being developed by American Trim.

The company is the lead applicant for a $5 million Ohio Third Frontier grant request to help fund commercializing electromagnetic forming, a sort of Star Trekian tool and die. The participants in the project, some more well known than others, are manufacturing and research heavyweights: Honda, participating in its first Third Frontier project, Whirlpool, The Ohio State University, Ohio Northern University, Cleveland-based aerospace company Cutting Dynamics and others.

The companies have pledged to create more than 700 jobs statewide with the products they would make using technology with which American Trim has already found success. The company is using previous Third Frontier grants to commercialize electromagnetic forming of fuel cell plates. Researchers understood they had a "platform technology," American Trim research and development director Steve Hatkevich said, that it could be used to make all sorts of things beyond the scope of traditional manufacturing.

"It's like a 21st century blacksmithing," Hatkevich said. "This is the same ability to form metal, using robotic cells and electromagnetic forming."

Once the technology is in place and a company is making parts with it, EMF costs 10 percent of traditional capital dollars, uses 10 percent of traditional floor space and 1 percent of traditional energy costs, Hatkevich said. It's also flexible, allowing for mass customization.

For example, Honda would use the technology to make car frames out of an ultra-strong steel the company can't use now because it's too strong to be shaped well. Using the different steel would reduce the weight of a vehicle by 500 pounds without compromising its safety and adding to fuel efficiency.

For helicopter parts, the technology would use simple "plug and play" casts to easily make different parts, instead of traditional dies that require hours to change and install.

The companies and others involved touch nearly every region of the state, Mayor David Berger said. The technology has the potential to transform how companies make things, a must for American manufacturing, which must improve to survive.

"Our hope is to have a broad impact on Ohio manufacturing," Berger said.

American Trim began developing the EMF technology in partnership with General Motors. This year is teaching the company the importance of diversifying the uses for the technology and the importance of creative, nimble manufacturing.

"One of the reasons that Chrysler is likely not to emerge from this [automotive] crisis is that they can't tool up. They have nothing in the pipeline to compete in the small-vehicle market," Berger said. "Ford is bringing its tooling from Europe. The challenge is to quickly respond to changing and localized markets. ... It goes to the heart of whether or not U.S. manufacturing can be viable long-term."

The grant process is a competitive one. While entities have requested grants totaling $147 million, only $23 million will be awarded. American Trim's request must first pass a written evaluation and then an oral presentation before awards are done in the spring.

An earlier try at the grant failed, Berger said, and the group has learned from that attempt. The new proposals address concerns and is led by a private company, not a research or government organization.