Towering behind Woolsey Hall on Wichita State’s campus is the skeleton of a new building.
The Hub for Advanced Manufacturing Research (HAMR) building is a new facility for the National Institution for Aviation Research (NIAR).
“It will have facilities that will facilitate advanced manufacturing research and training for industry customers, industry partners,” said Tracee Friess, associate vice president of strategic communications and marketing for Industry and Defense Programs.
Debra Franklin, the associate vice president for strategic initiatives and industry engagement, said the new building will allow NIAR to research manufacturing for its industry and governmental customers.
This can be done with technology like “digital twins,” which would allow NIAR researchers to study manufacturing systems through a digital model. Digital twins are digital renderings of physical systems, like factory production lines.
Franklin said that this will provide an opportunity for students who work with NIAR to gain experience with this type of technology.
“We also have students who are working with materials characterization, so students who work with statistical models,” Franklin said. “They get an opportunity to practice those skills and apply those skills in characterizing various kinds of materials.”
Friess and Franklin said HAMR could help smaller businesses, which may not have the tools for advanced manufacturing.
“Our goal, the reason for this whole initiative, is for us to invest in those technologies, for them and be a kind of research and test house so that they can learn about these technologies and determine how they might best implement them in order to make their businesses more efficient,” Franklin said.
The HAMR building will contain a mix of offices and laboratories, which Franklin said would be dedicated to different types of research.
“We have a robotics and automation section,” she said. “We have some emerging and digital manufacturing areas. We have some advanced prototyping areas. We have some materials characterization areas. We have a composite section, and we have some quality and performance laboratories.”
Part of the funding for HAMR came from a grant from the Economic Development Association in 2021, Franklin said. It was part of the federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge, intended to help boost local economies.
According to Wichita State, the project will cost $62 million, with $26 million coming from the 2021 grant.
Friess said the building is expected to be completed around the end of 2025.
