Yesterday Air Liquide and its U.S. subsidiary, Airgas, inaugurate the Advanced Fabrication Center (AFC) at the Air Liquide Delaware Innovation Campus in the U.S. As a manufacturing expertise center, the AFC focuses on helping industrial customers adopt new manufacturing technologies and more efficient and cost-effective production processes.
Air Liquide’s AFC was created with Airgas and OEMs to support the world’s largest metals fabrication market in the U.S. The AFC will deliver a continuous flow of development projects, including affiliate operation support, key innovations and exploratory R&D. Air Liquide’s manufacturing expertise in welding gases and advanced fabrication processes will be on display to manufacturing customers at the center.
The AFC involves customers and industrial collaborators early in the innovation process to address technological challenges – from finding optimal process gas compositions to process efficiency and operation’s safety, health and sustainability. The AFC puts the needs of customers from manufacturing and metal fabrication industries at the heart of its operations to help customers improve performance and production processes.
The AFC features dedicated “R&D studios” equipped for specialized research and staffed with experts who will be dedicated to key segments such as Welding and Cutting, Digitization and Visualization, Additive Manufacturing, Cryo-assisted manufacturing, as well as Robotics and Cobotics automation. Leveraging the team’s expertise at the Delaware Innovation Campus, the Center opens its doors to OEMs to test state-of-the-art equipment and serves as a collaboration space for end-users, OEMs, academic and research institutes, in order to innovatively develop and optimize new fabrication technologies.
Commented Michael Graff, Executive Vice President & Executive Committee Member of Air Liquide S.A. and Chairman & CEO of American Air Liquide Holdings, Inc.: “Air Liquide is devoted to innovation through application-focused research development and technological solutions. The AFC provides new, state-of-the-art facilities to support customer centric projects, improve and develop more efficient manufacturing technologies and encourage innovation to help sustainably meet the challenges of tomorrow.”
Source: Air Liquide
