Next ACE Machine Tool Training Hub Planned for North Carolina

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (N.C. A&T) have established a partnership aimed at revitalizing U.S. manufacturing with a focus on the machine tool industry.

The partnership agreement will advance America’s Cutting Edge (ACE), a joint Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE) initiative launched in 2020. ACE is a public-private partnership with the stated goal of reestablishing American leadership in the machine tool industry. It focuses on training experts, improving cost efficiency, researching and developing productivity innovations and developing partnerships to commercialize advancements. IACMI, through an agreement with DoD’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program, is leading an ACE industrial skills training program to scale workforce pipelines with a focus on machine tooling and advanced machining. Through ACE, DoD has established a regional machine tools innovation and workforce hub in Knoxville, Tenn.

N.C. A&T, the nation’s largest Historically Black College and University (HBCU), will become the newest home to an ACE regional machine tools workforce training and development center. The center will be housed in the Department of Applied Engineering Technology at N.C. A&T. The university will collaborate with local industry and community college partners in and around the Greensboro, N.C., area to implement a machine tool training model developed at the University of Tennessee and in use at UT-Knoxville and at Pellissippi State Community College. Additional ACE machine tool training centers are being planned across the U.S. as ACE partners scale up this workforce initiative.

The engineering technology programs at N.C. A&T provide an applied approach for engineering education with an emphasis on learning through hands-on activities, including CNC machining.

ACE uses free, online and in-person, hands-on training to connect national experts with students and incumbent industrial workers from all backgrounds, levels of education and work experience. To date, ACE has created and delivered free courses and bootcamp-style training in the automated control of machine tools to more than 2,100 students from 49 states.

ACE is already transferring resulting technologies to U.S. machine tool manufacturers. One ACE-developed tool has saved small and medium U.S. machine tool shops more than 55,000 machine hours and $5 million in costs.