And they do. But the AMC, a three-year-old program of the College of Engineering program, also draws stuff, figures out how to make stuff, and helps the people who want to make stuff in Maine—manufacturers in a documentedly difficult business environment—start, grow, and sustain their companies.
Their ultimate goal is to help build something much bigger. AMC exists to make innovative manufacturing economically viable and help build a better, more diversified economy in this and other parts of the state. In short, the AMC works to do what every politician claims to do: create jobs.
How can we get more and better jobs in Maine? Tom Christensen, the AMC’s director of operations, a UMaine alumnus, and a 30-year faculty member, says it’s “by providing better training, an educated workforce, and support to the people who can, or may one day, hire that workforce
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“So what do we do here?” he says. “What do you want us to do?”
Back in 2001, Christensen and AMC executive director Scott Dunning crisscrossed the state to ask that same question. They surveyed inventors, economic development leaders, and more than 100 manufacturers and machine shop owners, and asked them how such a facility, if built one day, could help. The idea came from UMaine engineering dean Larryl Matthews, who oversaw a similar program at New Mexico State University before coming to Orono.
The answer they heard most, from all sides, hinted at one of the most difficult problems manufacturing entrepreneurs face: getting prototypes. It’s fairly easy, and fairly cheap, to get 500 of an object made, or 1,000. Smaller quantities of something, for use in development or as prototypes or marketing samples, can be difficult and expensive. Machine shops and manufacturers spend a lot of time and money to set up a machine to make a part, so making one of something isn’t cost effective.
“Machine shop owners wanted to take the people who need ‘one-offs’ and ‘two-offs,’ and get them to the point where they want 100 or 500, or 5,000,” Christensen says. “So that’s what we do.”
UMaine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center opened in late 2002, sharing space in a campus building. The current 30,000-square-foot facility, paid for largely by a $5-million, voter-approved statewide bond in 2002, opened in the spring of 2005. More than two-thirds of the building is dedicated to machinery, and the main production floor looks like a machine shop on steroids. There are lathes, millers, grinders, and a host of specialized devices, many of them connected to computer monitors that make them state of the art.
On a recent summer day, most of the machines at AMC are quiet. Dunning explains that a commercial machine shop couldn’t survive that way, because it needs everything running as much as possible to be profitable—one reason to stay away from “one-offs.” This shop is designed to handle whatever comes in the door, from low-tech millings to unusual products using unusual materials.
That diversity, combined with the ability to focus on smaller and multiple projects, sets AMC apart, allowing the facility to serve everyone from small-time inventors to Maine Technology Institute grant-winners, as well as research and development projects from the state and across the university.
The center charges clients fees to support operations, although many clients save money compared to what they would pay in the private sector—in reduced fees, reduced travel costs, and because of the hands-on, personal assistance AMC can give.
“Realize that because the state invested in this building,” Dunning says, “there’s leverage there.”
That’s far from all the leverage AMC provides. Resources go well beyond machines, and even well beyond a well-trained staff of seven to nine people, including several engineers. The program offers a set of unparalleled connections to state organizations, a network of manufacturers and machine shops that’s represented on AMC’s board, and—maybe most uniquely—access to the College of Engineering’s talented faculty.
“If someone needs to talk to someone who’s an expert on silicon wafer material, we can deliver a professor who can deal with that,” Dunning says. “That’s tough to do on the outside, especially if you only need that expert for a couple of hours, for example.”
One of those resources relates directly to Christensen’s jobs-in-Maine goal: the undergraduate students who work paid jobs at the facility. With as many as 35 working at any one time, they’re a product in themselves. Working at AMC adds hands-on experience to their engineering training, making them more valuable to employers—a win-win for the students and the Maine companies who hire them.
Joseph Gross, a senior in mechanical engineering technology from Lisbon Falls, is spending his summer at a Bangor start-up, Hallowell International, with duties similar to that of a recent graduate.
“I love it,” says Gross, 22. “I could see a career here. I talk about work when I get home, and I drive my roommate a little crazy sometimes. But it’s exciting, working on something new, something I haven’t seen before, how things come together with a new product. I loved learning things like that, and here, I see it all applied in real life.”
Both Gross and CEO Duane Hallowell admit that without the AMC, the young man probably wouldn’t be working at Hallowell. Both also expect the young man may well work at Hallowell after his 2007 graduation. He’s not the only one whose job search will be enhanced by AMC experience. Hallowell has another on staff, too, and Gross said several 2006 AMC grads are working in Maine.
“They really help us with placement,” Gross says of the Advanced Manufacturing Center. “They’ve got a lot of connections.”
For Hallowell, who’s an AMC client, it wasn’t about a connection, but the skills of an Advanced Manufacturing Center student, a combination of class work and experience on the manufacturing floor that’s tough to find. He says both students were up to speed in a matter of days, and are really making a difference in the company.
“Joe’s working out tremendously for us,” Hallowell says. “He loved what he did [at AMC], and when you find a person who can do what he does and loves it, it’s a great combination. Everyone wants to see more people like Joe come out of there, because of that hands-on experience.”
The Advanced Manufacturing Center’s clients span the spectrum of anybody interested in making just about anything. Some inventors come to the facility with little more than a drawing on a napkin. AMC can produce blueprints, work with them on material selection, or make them a prototype. Some people already have their prototype, and need drawings and connections to get their project to a manufacturer. AMC works with them to develop what’s needed, and can even introduce them to potential manufacturers.
Established companies come to AMC looking to improve their efficiency. AMC can help improve a machine, or complete a design-build process that leads to a new system or process. They’ve helped people write business plans and grant proposals.
“We’ll do anything we can to help them be more economically viable, whether they’ve been in business for 50 years or they’re just starting out,” Dunning says.
Because much of the work they do is proprietary, Dunning and Christensen can’t talk much about specific projects. They will say that the client list includes Penobscot Frozen Foods in Belfast, Fisher Engineering in Rockland, Irving, and many others all over the state. AMC also works extensively with the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center, and with companies from the state’s incubator system. The list is not limited to Maine. In fact, they’ve done work for firms in such far-flung locations as Alaska.
Still, the main goal is assisting Maine companies overcome obstacles in today’s global business environment.
“Maine is a tough spot,” Christensen says. “You’ve got high electric rates, high heating oil rates, and you typically use more of both than most parts of the country. We’re a long way from population centers, so you’ve got to ship everything. That all puts us a little bit behind, and our companies, to survive here, have got to be efficient.”
Dunning is quick to point out that the Advanced Manufacturing Center doesn’t compete with private-sector Maine firms: “If someone asks us to do something and they can easily get that done someplace else, we send them,” Dunning says. “We’ll give them a list of shops and say, ‘They’ll take care of this for you.’ So we feel like we’re helping [the shops], too.”
Chris Frank’s company, Intelligent Spatial Technologies in Orono, is three years old, and, he hopes, on the verge of big things. The company’s first product, the iPointer, is a device that allows visitors to historical sites or museums to receive multimedia information about an object or site by pointing a wireless device at it. It’s a software and data services company, as opposed to a straight manufacturer.
But in marketing the device to both cell-phone providers (he hopes they’ll make it available as a service) and potential end customers, Frank needed a prototype to fit a digital compass on the back of a mobile phone, and AMC has one of only two rapid prototyping machines in the state. It’s essentially a three-dimensional copier that can create 3-D models of a part from strands of plastic. Frank can get his prototypes, or make changes to them to suit different customers, quickly and inexpensively. And he can make them cheaply, on-site. “It is inexpensive,” Frank says. “But there’s also that personal care. They don’t just have one conversation with you. They work with you, design something, take it through 10 or 15 iterations. They’re responsive, and helpful.”
Without the Advanced Manufacturing Center, Frank’s company wouldn’t be as far along as it is, he says.
“It’s made a huge difference for us. We’d have to search out people who do this stuff, maybe out of state, and it would be difficult to find people willing to do it, especially quickly. If I have a meeting with Nokia, and a week later I have a meeting with Motorola, AMC can make the changes, and do it quickly.”
When Hallowell started his company in Bangor last fall, Christensen told the entrepreneur to come talk to AMC about any problems they had. Hallowell, who’s just started manufacturing residential heat pumps for cold climates—a heating and cooling system previously restricted to warmer areas of the world—after a nine-month R&D phase, says that advice has paid off remarkably well.
“We had some production and development issues that we couldn’t figure out,” Hallowell says. “We went up there, and we had a solution within 20 minutes. Tom pulled all his guys together and we still use that process today.”
The Advanced Manufacturing Center has helped Hallowell “get through some difficult times,” from getting production up and running, to making his machinery more efficient, and even finding a Maine-based manufacturer to produce the pump’s cabinet assembly.
The biggest advantage of AMC, Hallowell says, is timing. While he appreciates that the price is good—“I would’ve paid a multiple of the amount I’ve spent without AMC, and that would’ve set us back,” he says—the fact that many of his projects can get done in a couple of days at AMC is the thing that helps his company most.
“Without them, I’d have to find an engineering and machine shop, probably in Massachusetts or New Hampshire,” Hallowell says. “We have great local shops, but they’re usually overstretched. I had someone lined up out of state to do my cabinet assemblies, though I wanted to keep everything in Maine. They helped me do that.”
Keeping everything in Maine. That’s exactly what the AMC tries to do.
