Detroit’s LIFT Center Announces Partnership, Will Debut Record-breaking Linear Friction Welder

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Indiana-based Manufacturing Technology Inc. has announced it will develop North America’s largest linear friction welder (in terms of force capacity) and deliver it to the Lightweight Innovations For Tomorrow for use in Detroit.

LIFT is one of the founding members of Manufacturing USA, a federal effort to better develop and deploy advanced lightweight metal manufacturing technologies and encourage education and training programs in the workforce.

The LF3-75 welder is poised to be the first of its kind and is currently under development, with completion projected for spring 2018. The welder will be housed in LIFT’s Corktown manufacturing center along Rosa Parks Boulevard, and will bring the same linear friction welding technology used in the aerospace field to the automotive industry. It will primarily be used for lightweight metal research and development projects.

“We find this machine to be incredibly valuable for the future of high-tech manufacturing,” says Dan Adams, MTI’s president and chief technology officer. “It is so vital to the field, in fact, that we came to a cost-sharing agreement with LIFT in order to bring greater industry accessibility and capacity for future development work.”

Acquiring the machine is part of LIFT’s $50 million investment in conjunction with The Composites Institute, in their shared manufacturing facility in Detroit. With MTI and LIFT sharing a joint vision for the future of U.S. manufacturing, manufacturers will be able to weld full size demonstrator parts in the United States for the first time.