Industry Summary Articles

Digital manufacturing company Protolabs announced today that it has become a founding member of MIT’s newly formed Center for Additive and Digital Advanced Production Technologies (ADAPT) — a consortium focused on scaling new manufacturing technology through research, education, actionable insights, and an MIT-based ecosystem that pairs industry and academia.

“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, President and CEO at Protolabs, which provides industrial 3D printing along with injection molding, sheet metal fabrication, and CNC machining services.

Joining Protolabs as founding members of ADAPT are Autodesk, General Motors, and Volkswagen, to name a few. Helming the ADAPT consortium is 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.”

Among the initial efforts of ADAPT are seeding 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.

For more information on ADAPT, visitadapt.mit.edu or contact the initiative’s program manager Haden Quinlan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 910-690-9074.

To view the original press release, please click here.

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