Michigan 3D Printing Accelerator Project DIAMOnD Opens Digital Transformation Center

Project DIAMOnD, an additive manufacturing (AM) accelerator within Michigan nonprofit digital technologies consortium Automation Alley, recently opened the Digital Transformation Center (DTC) in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills. The DTC is funded by Geofabrica, an advanced manufacturing consultancy and service provider, also based in Auburn Hills.

Established in 2020, Project DIAMOnD was initially funded by grants from Michigan’s Oakland and Macomb counties, towards the objective of aiding local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and building up a potential source of PPE equipment in response to the pandemic. Project DIAMOnD has since gone on to distribute $25 million to Oakland and Macomb SMEs.

Further, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced in May 2024 that she plans to use American Rescue Plan Act funding to help Project DIAMOnD go statewide. The DTC should provide a major boost in that effort, giving Project DIAMOnD a base-of-operations enabling organizational learning, workforce development, and product and process testing.

In a press release about Project DIAMOnD’s opening of the Digital Transformation Center, Pavan Muzumdar, Project DIAMOnD CEO and Automation Alley COO, said, “At the Digital Transformation Center, Project DIAMOnD participants will learn how to transform their businesses from a capital and process-based mindset to a design and intellectual property mindset facilitated by 3D printing. This encompasses having an opportunity to launch and validate products before investing in industrial additive manufacturing equipment. They will also retain access to 3D print and post-process products, without the burden of owning and operating complex equipment.”

Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter said, “Project DIAMOnD has already provided more than 300 companies with the 3D printers that have allowed them to become more competitive in a global marketplace. And the Digital Transformation Center builds on the success that is helping transform the region and state into a magnet for advanced manufacturing and training.”

Once Project DIAMOnD truly takes off across Michigan, I wouldn’t be surprised if the initiative soon enough goes nationwide, as well. Even with all the advanced manufacturing accelerators that have arisen in the US over the last several years, Project DIAMOnD remains quite unique insofar as it addresses general industrial problems and targets SMEs — precisely the area of the US manufacturing sector that needs the most attention right now.

Moreover, even if Project DIAMOnD itself doesn’t go national, it certainly presents the sort of model that should be used to create an AM accelerator on a national scale. And that’s something that the US still desperately needs: without such a national framework in place, all the separate manufacturing  efforts that have emerged in the 2020s will continue to be too fragmented to effectively standardize.