Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) is a research-based collaboration among the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia State University, and best-in-class manufacturing companies worldwide including Canon Virginia, CHROMALLOY, Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, SANDVIK Coromant, SIEMENS and Sulzer Metco. These manufacturers collaborate with accomplished faculty and students from Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and Virginia State University to perform advanced manufacturing research in surface engineering and manufacturing systems. CCAM houses computational and large-scale production labs, as well as open production space for heavy equipment and surface coating processes, including a directed vapor deposition machine, integrated data acquisition systems, thermal spraying machine, and a thermal conductivity measurement system. The collaboration between the best-in-class manufacturers and top university researchers promises to accelerate the transfer of laboratory innovation to new “production-ready” solutions for factories worldwide.

CCAM was named a 2013 “Best of the Best” Project by Engineering News Record.