Protolabs Partners with MIT Consortium to Advance Manufacturing

“We’ve experienced firsthand the tremendous progress that additive manufacturing has made over the past decade, and we’re quickly approaching another important milestone in 3D printing’s rapid ascent into industrial manufacturing space. My hope is that ADAPT will not only evolve additive manufacturing as a viable digital manufacturing solution for prototyping, but also end-use production. We are thrilled to be a founding member of ADAPT to help make that a reality,” said Vicki Holt, our President and CEO.

Other founding members of ADAPT include Autodesk, General Motors, and Volkswagen. Spearheading this initiative will be MIT professor John Hart, who also leads the university’s Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity and oversees the design and manufacturing facilities in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“AM [additive manufacturing]—and the path toward a responsive, digital manufacturing infrastructure both within and between organizations—requires multidisciplinary expertise at the cutting edge of mechanical engineering, computer science, materials, and other fields,” explained Hart. “I am thrilled to launch ADAPT to accelerate MIT’s efforts toward enabling a next generation of production technologies, wherein AM is a cornerstone.”

ADAPT’s initial efforts will support exploratory research projects with faculty and graduate students, and accelerating the establishment of a new, advanced additive manufacturing laboratory at MIT. ADAPT activities also complement MIT’s leading AM education programs like Additive Manufacturing for Innovative Design and Production, an online certificate program offered by MITxPRO with manufacturing and engineering support from Protolabs.