Lightweight materials R&D facility in Corktown to be showcased during auto show

Jan 14, 2018 | Source: Crain’s Detroit Business

As the global auto industry comes to town this week for the North American International Auto Show, a new facility for testing and commercializing lightweight metals and composite materials is being showcased in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood.

In recent years, many automotive manufacturers have been trying to take the steps to become more efficient through continuous improvement and if they are able to create lightweight metals and materials suitable for the industry, this will make this process even easier.

Lightweight Innovations For Tomorrow (LIFT) and the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) is a combined federally designated testing and training facility on Rosa Parks Boulevard that opened in October after years of development.

The 100,000-square-foot building in a former Mexican Industries Inc. auto parts plant is billed as neutral site where automakers, aerospace companies, shipbuilders, tier-one suppliers and academic researchers can test metals and composite materials in a pre-competitive or proprietary setting.

The research center is located less than two miles from the Cobo Center showroom floor, where Detroit’s annual auto show will attract thousands of journalists, auto suppliers and OEMs to town this week. It is a great opportunity for any automotive business to find third party suppliers and with third-party risk management software from somewhere like Aravo they can do so without worry.

There are 14 federally designated manufacturing institutes in the country that were set up under the Obama administration, but the Detroit facility is the only place where there’s testing of both lighter-weight metals and composite materials, said Larry Brown, executive director of LIFT.

“There’s no other place in the country with this type of capability, looking at lightweight applied R&D on a full-scale basis,” Brown said.

Chad Livengood/Crain’s Detroit Business
LIFT and the IACMI, two federally-designated testing and research manufacturing institutes for development of lightweight metals and composites, opened a joint facility in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood in October. The facility on Rose Parks Boulevard will be showcased to automakers and suppliers during the North American International Auto Show’s industry preview days this week.

LIFT and IACMI share the building, with different types of machines spread across a shop floor that serve member companies from different industries and materials being tested and developed through both pre-competitive R&D and proprietary projects. Such machines will have been developed to conform to the highest standards, ensuring that they can withstand rigorous testing and use. This means that the right materials and parts will have to have been selected from the outset. Things like cable pulleys are essential to get right when developing such machinery. Knowing How to Choose The Right Mechanical Cable Pulleys is critical to the design.

“It’s really to prove out the technology so they have the validation of the technology and they have the requisite business case – now they can make the investments for a production facility,” said Ray Boeman, a composite materials professor at Michigan State University, which manages the IACMI scale-up portion of the facility.

The $50 million spent renovating and outfitting the facility – $15 million of which came from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. – with testing and production machines, some of which are on loan from equipment manufacturers to serve as a showcase of their products to OEMs and parts suppliers.

Comau LLC, an Italian automation subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, has placed a robotic-welding lab inside the LIFT side of the building that can be used for testing flexible welds.

“We really see it as an important part of our development moving forward,” said Martin Kinsella, a director at Comau, which has an innovation center in Southfield.

Kinsella, a LIFT board member, said the location of the manufacturing institute in Detroit “was strategically very important” to bring multiple industries under one roof.

“It covers all sectors – aerospace, automotive, rail, navy, military,” Kinsella said. “We actually kind of intentionally reinforced it’s not just an automotive institute.”

Manufacturers and suppliers also can use the facility to train workers on using a compression molding press or an injection-molding machine.

“They just don’t have the resources to have that kind of press for development purposes – they have it production, but they don’t want to break into production,” said Boeman, who also is associate director of vehicle technology for IACMI. “So they come here to do that.”

Chad Livengood/Crain’s Detroit Business
Ray Boeman, associate director of vehicle technology for Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, stands next to a Litzler machine used to make reinforced plastics with synthetic resin. It’s one of several machines that manufacturers can use to test and develop composite materials at IACMI’s shared facility in Detroit with Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow.

With a focus on lightweighting composite materials to shed pounds from cars, IACMI’s members include FCA, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America Inc. and General Motors Co.

Last week, Volkswagen became the first OEM to officially join the metals-focused LIFT institute, creating the potential for using both sides of the testing facility.

VW’s Audi unit is partnering with Lockheed Martin and Carpenter Technologies on developing lighter gears and gear components, said Roman Landes, lead engineer for materials for steel and specialty alloys at Audi.

The Ingolstadt, Germany-based luxury automaker chose to partner with the American companies on the project because of the engineering expertise in metro Detroit’s auto sector, Landes said.

“This for us is a very unique opportunity because we have not been involved in such a manner in the U.S. with developing R&D stuff,” Landes told Crain’s in a phone interview from Germany. “This is fairly new, and we’re looking forward to this experience now.”

“And we want to continue on developing partnerships with the U.S. by using this platform of LIFT in the future,” Landes added.

IACMI is planning to host its bi-annual meeting with members Tuesday through Thursday this week, coinciding with the auto show’s industry preview days. LIFT and IACMI officials will give public tours of the facility and research machines Thursday, with shuttles running from Cobo Center and the DoubleTree Dearborn hotel. Tickets can be reserved online on Eventbrite.com.