NCC is rapidly developing smart commercial composite solutions, identifying technology transfer opportunities, introducing new manufacturing methods and helping to produce new composite products and business enterprises. In its pursuit of new product development, NCC not only examines promising technology but also looks at how existing industry knowledge might fit other markets. Once a project is selected, NCC uses its member fees to begin researching the viability of the new technology. If the technology proves viable, the Center works to secure appropriate government funds to begin developing the venture. The research helps NCC identify what changes will need to be made to existing manufacturing processes and equipment to make the new product factory ready. Three things work together to make NCC different from other organizations:
- Technical specialists experienced in multiple disciplines
- NCC’s ability to look at large cross sections of different types of industries and see how the same technology might work for those industries in different ways.
- NCC’s ability to take underlying technologies, generate royalty streams and use those funds along with various grants to investigate new product applications
Recent examples of NCC’s successes in this area include efforts which birthed the underlying technology being used today to produce composite pick up truck boxes on General Motors’ Silverado. NCC is also moving forward to spawn a new aerospace parts company with a further adaptation of the technology developed for this automotive application. To read more about NCC’s past and current projects in the automotive, infrastructure, aerospace and industrial arenas, just click on your area of interest. You can also read more about NCC’s key technologies by clicking on one of the Center’s area’s of expertise - NCC’s signature Rapid Fiber Preform, Precision Filament Winding, Litecast™, SRIM, Closed Molding or Pultrusion/Pul-Molding.
For more details on new product development contact Alan Fatz at afatz@compositecenter.org.