American Trim builds Material Deposition Center.

American Trim, Lima, Ohio, announced that the grant application for the Materials Deposition Center (of which American Trim is a collaborative partner) received $3 million in new funding from Ohio's Third Frontier Wright Projects program to construct a new Materials Deposition Center (MDC) to commercialize advanced functional and decorative thin-film coating processes. The funding is the result of a collaborative effort between American Trim, Rhodes State College, Ohio Northern University, The Edison Materials Technology Center (EMTEC), The Ohio Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Center, and the City of Lima, Ohio. American Trim will supplement the grant with a comparable in-kind investment through facilities and personnel. The MDC will scale up laboratory-proven coating technologies into a production-scale digital application system. The first project will be the development and demonstration of a low-cost engineered finish simulating stainless steel sheet material suitable for use in refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, washers, dryers, and control panels for the decorative stainless steel appliance market.

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Subsequent projects will include complex, patterned finishes targeting additional interior environments including automotive, home, and commercial buildings. The Center seeks to exploit new digital printing and materials deposition processes to produce engineered finishes while avoiding the use of expensive alloys or environmentally hazardous coating processes. Such surface appearances have not previously been producible via commercial printing or industrial deposition, but dramatic new advances in digital printing and materials dispensing technologies are enabling these two industrial arts to converge.

The MDC will serve as a workforce-development facility to train technicians and undergraduate and graduate level engineering students in the new technologies. www.amtrim.com.