MT Magazine March/April 2024

MARCH/APRIL 2024

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government. Which explains why Rick Neff currently has the original Strati, minus its means of propulsion, on jack stands in his parents’ garage. It can roll but not drive. But at IMTS 2014, it was powered, and Rogers and Woods took it out for its initial spin. The two men drove the Strati on a red carpet out of the ETC and down the Grand Concourse of McCormick Place toward the East Building. From there, they entered McCormick Place Square, where the police and media greeted them with much fanfare. “It was an exhilarating experience,” says Woods. “The team had dedicated tremendous effort to come up with new solutions for the project, and its execution shows the inspiration and innovative spirit of IMTS. It’s what we strive to bring to every show.” For the second run, Gurney got in. “It was an unbelievable feeling,” she remembers fondly. “But what kept going on through my mind was: ‘Now what do we do – how do we top this?’” People Power While the creation of the Strati was a technological tour de force, everyone involved stressed one aspect of the project that allowed it to succeed: Teamwork. As Love recalls, for example: “In 2013, we had a cobbled together prototype system at ORNL. But working in a team changed the pace we could move.” And one of the lessons that Neff says that the Strati project taught him beyond any doubt: “The way to accelerate innovation is through collaboration of diverse people – backgrounds, education, job experience.”

But One More Element Looking back, Lonnie Love says that there was something else needed to create the Strati on the floor of McCormick Place in 2014, to do something that had never been done before with a technology that we now take as a given but which then simply wasn’t ready for prime time: “It was an amazing team of industry and government working together. But we needed that stress of IMTS. We needed a hard deadline, failure not an option, high profile ... If we fail, we look like idiots – which we probably were, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.” In the decade since that remarkable IMTS, the AMT Emerging Technology Center has continued pushing the boundaries of manufacturing technology. It has featured such moon shots as a carbon-fiber printed house; an automated cell linking a Hurco CNC, a Universal Robot arm, and a Hexagon CMM using the MTConnect™ standard; technologies underpinning the Giant Magellan telescope; and a space habitat designed as a living and work environment for astronauts and researchers living on the moon and Mars. Still, among such exciting exhibitions and achievements, the Strati stands tall. At IMTS 2024, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Gurney, Love, Neff, and Rogers will reunite on stage. Make sure to visit IMTS.com to register to catch up with the Strati crew and see what future technologies will be unveiled in the ETC this year.

If you have any questions about this information, please contact Gary at vasilash@gmail.com.