The Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME) has facilities consisting of over 50,000 square feet of advanced manufacturing and design capabilities and $25 million of industrial equipment.
CDME: A Hub for Innovation and Collabration
A fully integrated environment spanning design, prototyping, advanced manufacturing, and testing. Each space is purpose-built to support rapid iteration, cross-functional collaboration, and hands-on learning.
CDME’s ITAR-Compliant Facilities
Are purpose-built to securely support projects involving controlled defense technologies, ensuring strict adherence to U.S. export control regulations. With robust physical security, controlled access protocols and trained personnel, these facilities enable management of sensitive data and hardware throughout the project lifecycle.
5S Principles
The CDME facility applies 5S principles—Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain—to create a highly organized, efficient and safe working environment that supports precision engineering and secure operations. By maintaining clean and clearly labeled workspaces with standardized processes and continuous improvement practices, CDME ensures consistent quality, reduces waste and reinforces compliance with strict regulatory and customer requirements.
Capabilities
CDME supports a wide range of advanced technologies, including additive manufacturing, AI, automation, materials, welding, robotics and smart systems.
These capabilities allow teams to tackle complex challenges across industries.
AI and Robotics
Artificially Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (AIMS) Lab is a flexible, robotics-intensive manufacturing facility designed to replicate a real-world production environment while enabling advanced research and development.
The lab is more than 3,000 square feet and is equipped with a range of industrial and collaborative robotic systems, including 12 industrial robots with up to 500 LB payloads. Its layout supports simultaneous operation of multiple robotic workcells, allowing for scalable, end-to-end manufacturing workflows. It is also equipped with machine vision, custom sensors and computational infrastructure for AI-driven process control.
The facility is capable of performing a broad spectrum of processes, including robotic welding, forming, machining, grinding, additive manufacturing, injection molding, and laser or waterjet cutting, as well as inspection and material characterization. The space also has an integration of simulation tools, open-source robotics platforms and advanced automation systems.
Polymer and Composite Additive Manufacturing
CDME’s polymer additive manufacturing capabilities center on industrial-scale 3D printing of high-performance thermoplastics and engineered materials for both prototyping and production applications.
These capabilities are integrated into a full engineering workflow that includes design optimization for additive manufacturing, material selection, process parameter development, and post-processing to achieve functional, end-use parts.
At its core is a suite of polymer additive manufacturing processes, including photopolymerization, polymer filament extrusion and material jetting, which allow engineers to fabricate intricate, multi-material geometries with fine resolution.
CDME’s WASP printer adds a unique capability to its additive manufacturing ecosystem by enabling 3D printing with nontraditional, paste-based materials such as clay and ceramics. WASP systems use a process called liquid deposition modeling (LDM), where viscous materials are extruded layer by layer to create complex, organic shapes and structures that are difficult to achieve with standard thermoplastics. At CDME, this type of printer supports experimentation with sustainable materials, architectural forms, and advanced design applications, complementing the center’s polymer and composite capabilities and expanding its ability to explore new manufacturing approaches beyond conventional plastics.
Metal Additive Manufacturing
CDME houses a large-scale, industry-facing metal additive manufacturing facility equipped with a diverse range of advanced systems and end-to-end engineering capabilities.
The lab integrates multiple metal AM modalities and OEM platforms, including directed energy deposition (DED) with both wire and blown powder, wire arch, laser and electron beam powder bed fusion, binder jetting, robotic welding systems, and ultrasonic additive manufacturing.
This breadth of technologies enables CDME to support everything from high-resolution, complex geometries to large-format builds and high-throughput production scenarios. The facility is complemented by robust capabilities in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), materials and process development, parameter optimization, part qualification and post-processing, allowing teams to move seamlessly from concept through prototyping to production-ready components.
Combined with its extensive equipment base and multidisciplinary expertise, CDME provides a comprehensive environment for developing, validating, and scaling metal additive manufacturing solutions across industries such as aerospace, automotive, energy and defense.
Machining and Fabrication
CDME features a full-scale machining and fabrication environment that supports comprehensive product development, prototyping and production activities
The facility is equipped with a complete machine shop that includes both CNC and manual mills and lathes, enabling high-precision subtractive manufacturing for a wide range of materials and component sizes.
Precision Cutting
The 5‑ft by 10‑ft waterjet system at CDME enables precise cutting of a wide range of materials, including metals, composites, and ceramics, without introducing heat-affected zones. This capability is especially valuable for producing complex geometries, rapid prototypes, and large-format components with high accuracy and minimal material distortion.
Materials Processing
CDME offers robust, industrial-scale materials processing facilities and capabilities that support a full spectrum of advanced manufacturing research and production.
CDME also houses one of the largest research foundries in the nation, featuring capabilities such as 150‑lb sand casting, a 300‑ton forming press, 280 die casting cell, vacuum induction melting, vacuum arc melting, investment casting, permanent mold casting and gravity casting, providing comprehensive metal processing and alloy development capacity.
Welding and Joining
The facility works across multiple modalities, including friction stir welding and ultrasonic welding, enabling precise control over heat input, material flow, and joint integrity. It is also equipped to handle the welding of non-metallic materials, expanding its capabilities beyond traditional metal fabrication.
CDME has strong expertise in welding dissimilar metals, an increasingly important capability for lightweighting and performance optimization in modern manufacturing. This allows for the integration of different material properties within a single component, supporting innovation in sectors such as aerospace, automotive and defense.
Biomedical Devices
CDME has a diverse set of advanced manufacturing capabilities that enable rapid, high-precision production of complex medical components and devices.
CDME's biomedical lab follows HIPAA compliance through comprehensive measures that ensure the privacy and security of patient information, including controlled access, secure data practices and continuous staff education.
Through integrated capabilities in CAD design, multi-material fabrication, and prototyping to validation workflows, CDME helps translate early-stage medical device concepts into functional, real-world solutions while reducing development risk and time to deployment.
These technologies support the production of both rigid and flexible parts, often within a single build, enabling realistic anatomical models and functional device prototypes. Complementing these capabilities is silicone casting and molding, where custom molds are used to create soft, biocompatible components with variable stiffness and lifelike mechanical behavior.
CDME also supports point-of-care manufacturing, enabling the creation of customized, patient-specific devices directly within or near clinical environments, which accelerates treatment timelines and improves outcomes. By advancing devices from early design through prototyping and validation, CDME helps de-risk new technologies and translate them into real-world medical applications.
These capabilities create a hybrid manufacturing environment in which multiple processes can be combined into a single workflow, enabling rapid iteration and efficient production of highly customized, complex medical devices and models that would be difficult or impossible to achieve through conventional manufacturing alone.
Material Testing
The facility maintains a suite of testing and metrology systems. These systems evaluate material behavior under controlled conditions. They also include environmental and mechanical testing using creep and fatigue frames. Data acquisition systems capture performance at high sampling rates for detailed analysis.
CDME supports precision inspection and measurement with tools such as non-contact distance probes, eddy-current thickness measurement and 3D scanning. These tools enable dimensional verification, reverse engineering, and quality assurance of manufactured parts.
Additional capabilities include heat treatment and metalworking validation, metrology and machining-based performance testing. All these support iterative prototype validation and optimization. These capabilities allow CDME to conduct end-to-end materials evaluation. This includes process development and fabrication through inspection, testing and performance verification within a single, integrated facility.
Industrial Cybersecurity and Electronics
The lab integrates these systems with both wired and wireless communication platforms to model how data flows across industrial networks. It also includes infrastructure to simulate cyber threats against operational technology systems, along with real-time monitoring and data capture tools to observe system behavior.
Additionally, the lab supports prototyping and testing of secure embedded hardware and communication architectures.