The United States is well underway with its strategy to strengthen domestic manufacturing, but reaping the many economic advantages therein will not be possible without players like Center Street Technologies, where advanced design, state-of-the-art technologies, and innovative manufacturing platforms intersect.
Center Street Technologies is a team of subject matter experts who have come together to demonstrate the capacity of additive manufacturing as a means to augment existing manufacturing processes by producing large-scale polymer-based structures and components.
Using advanced modeling and simulations paired with leading industrial controls and automation, and through an innovative approach to design, engineering, and materials sciences, the company’s comprehensive manufacturing solutions have served partners in aerospace, defense, and many other industries that recognize the added value of this approach.
Growing manufacturing capacity in a big way
It is an exciting time for Center Street Technologies. Having proven the performance of its equipment and the validity of its processes, the company has positioned itself as a beacon of opportunity for players across markets and sectors, particularly where there is demand for high-mix, low-volume parts, like the maritime industrial industry and shipbuilding sector where supply issues not only threaten production, but also national security.
“A big issue right now is the ability to get the castings they need for production in a timely manner. So we’re really trying to promote our ability to help with that and create patterns that have either been damaged or obsoleted where there’s no digital engineering of them,” explains Matthew Heffinger, an advanced manufacturing engineer with Center Street Technologies, of the company’s reverse engineering capabilities for large-scale components.
And they are large indeed. The company’s flagship machine, the AMC2304, is aptly named for its capacity. At 12’ x 24’ x 8’, it boasts 2,304 cubic feet of build volume. Equipped with a dual gantry with a five-axis machine head and spindle capable of up to 24,000 rotations per minute (RPM), it serves as the company’s principal printer and mill, where designs are taken from the digital environment to the test bench, efforts that are supplemented by the smaller AMC160.
Again, named for its size and capacity at 4’ x 8’ x 5’, the AMC160 is armed with a three-axis extrusion system as well as a new six-axis articulating Comau industrial robot. Complete with Siemens industrial controls, it serves as the core development platform for the AMC2304.
“They all run Siemens SINUMERIK ONE controls, which is their newest and latest and greatest controller,” Heffinger says. This robust control system enables the design and production of digital twins. “We’re able to digitally emulate the whole control system and prove out and develop new controls and engineering-related developments digitally prior to actually downloading them to the physical equipment; it’s pretty cool. It’s very, very accurate emulation of our control system as a whole,” which enables quality control to take effect further upstream in the manufacturing process.
According to Process Engineering Manager, Casey Gonatas, the AMC160 “is a smaller volume machine with the same extruder that we could develop different components on, or different tool pathing strategies, or any other kind of R&D activities we need to do without interrupting production on the 2304.”
Adding the six-axis robot to the AMC160 enables the integration of multiple different end effectors to fulfill different tasks in a staged approach, such as pick and place operations, milling, and machining.
“We’ve successfully machined a couple of parts using the robot with the machining spindle as the end effector, so that was an exciting development to be able to do the milling work in that cell as well, which is more of a direct comparison to the 2304 that’s able to do the printing, machining, and inspection,” explains Gonatas.
The integration of Grale Technologies’ inspection application—considered a leader in commercial digital metrology functions that offer real-time measurement of parts without interruption—elevates the efficiency and accuracy of the AMC2304.
Greater capabilities, validated results
Over the last year or so, Center Street Technologies has worked diligently to expand its general production capabilities. From tooling to castings to forgings, it continues to identify ways to address gaps in manufacturing through advanced technologies and additive manufacturing.
For instance, its efforts in lightweighting are timely given the 2025 updates to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards. Lightweighting, also referred to as foaming, is a process whereby gas is injected into the extruded material to offer a lighter overall weight with the same performance. According to Heffinger, “We’re able to lightweight very high-performance polymers; with traditional lightweighting techniques, you’re kind of stuck at a lower performance level on your materials that you can lightweight, but we can lightweight aerospace-grade, high-performance polymers,” which is gaining the attention of leading industry players.
Commercialization of new technologies and approaches is always a challenge, particularly as many customers are risk-averse. It is hard to offer an outright guarantee that the applications and components will perform to expectation; however, over the last several years, Center Street Technologies has been collecting data to ensure the quality of its inputs. What the team found was that it was not always necessarily the cheapest option, but was faster, more efficient, and dedicated to optimized quality and throughput.
From a quality management standpoint, Center Street Technologies is one step closer to being AS9100D and ISO 9001 certified. Having received recommendations, certification is expected later this year. The company is also working toward CMMC Level 2 compliance, which will further improve its credibility with critical industries like aerospace and government entities.
“The more time we can spend on addressing government-related issues and developing technologies to solve those problems, it gives us more time to mature and gather more data and have more confidence,” Heffinger explains. Where time is money, this is invaluable.
The application is especially useful for prototyping as it requires less rework or subtractive manufacturing to achieve quality results. During the design phase, the team can adapt quickly and make necessary adjustments before going to print, controlling quality throughout the process through simulation.
Scaling success
The team at Center Street Technologies is a small, tight-knit group that leverages its two machines to address issues that traditional manufacturing cannot, particularly where high-mix, low-volume components are concerned.
As Gonatas notes, “We really only have the two machines for producing parts, so that’s our main limit internally as far as scaling up to have a higher production rate. But the nice thing about how strong our digital backbone is, is that everything can be easily scaled to fit different machines, different platforms to meet different customer requirements,” which highlights the flexibility of the process.
Through its work, Center Street Technologies is working to build confidence not only in advanced manufacturing applications like additive manufacturing, but in the sector as a whole through strategic partnerships dedicated to workforce development. With its partners, the company serves as a conduit between academics and industry to seek out ways to strengthen the advanced manufacturing workforce through workforce development programs and initiatives to ensure that there is a pipeline of talent at the ready to scale with demand.
“There’s a lot going on in academia that’s not being fully translated to the manufacturing world, so we want to position ourselves as that middleman, interfacing with different research labs in academia and also able to transition the technology through workforce development and make it reachable to the manufacturing industrial base,” Heffinger explains. At a time when the U.S. is losing legacy manufacturing operations and struggling to find a skilled workforce capable of fulfilling growing demand, these efforts are not only relevant, but timely.
As Gonatas tells us, “There are less and less people trained to produce things like that, so being able to attack it from more of a digitally focused side—something with more quality control, with more engineering going into the work—I think it’s something that we can bring to the table and have a positive impact on an industry that’s kind of hurting right now.”
Advancing the industry
From workforce development to advanced manufacturing applications, Center Street Technologies continues to identify the best use cases to demonstrate the value of its approach and the implications its use can have for American manufacturing. Additive manufacturing and advanced manufacturing approaches will be key to unlocking the true potential of the U.S. manufacturing sector and economy, and those who recognize this value are poised to thrive.
The focus moving forward will be “getting people in the industry or potential customers to see the value and think of additive manufacturing or advanced manufacturing as more of a realistic solution, not a last resort or a cool niche,” explains Gonatas, who notes that at Center Street Technologies, “we’re making real products that are fully capable of meeting a customer requirement.”
The goal is to get operations to take that leap of faith, to look beyond traditional manufacturing processes to unlock the value of additive parts and components. Such parts are proven, validated, and capable—now they just need to be fully leveraged for their value to be truly realized.
