Pittsburgh, The New Home Of 3D-Printed Steel

Innovation and technological advancement — plus location and workforce — made Pittsburgh the “Steel City” in the late 1800s. And while steel mills no longer smog the skies, new advancements in metal fabrication are revitalizing this integral part of the city’s identity.

A project on 10 acres of Pittsburgh International Airport’s Innovation Campus, with room to occupy 185 more acres, has brought together six companies developing and producing metal 3D printed parts. The goal is to expand to 30 or 40 companies establishing this stretch of Pittsburgh as a global hub of 3D-printed steel (and titanium, aluminum, nickel, and copper).

Called Neighborhood 91, this first-of-its-kind manufacturing campus aims to accelerate the adoption of metal 3D printing technology in the U.S., displacing some older technologies and reshoring a large chunk of metal part fabrication from overseas.

Recently, Neighborhood 91 celebrated the total occupancy of its first building and ground-breaking on its next. Already, thousands of metal 3D printed parts flow out of this facility, destined for machine makers and auto plants, and installed on locomotives, spacecraft, and airplanes.

“When we say this is happening in Pittsburgh, people say, yeah, that makes sense,” says John Barnes, co-founder of Metal Powder Works at Neighborhood 91 and one of the founding architects of the project. “So it’s almost like this is the thing that Pittsburgh was meant to do.”

The Remaking of a Metal City

First conceived in 2019 by the Allegheny County Airport Authority in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh and The Barnes Global Advisors, the goal of Neighborhood 91 was to revolutionize the metal AM industry by bringing together key supply chain components in one centralized location.

Pittsburgh wasn’t selected to become the home of metal additive manufacturing (AM) — the industrial name for 3D printing — solely because of its history in metal fabrication. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have two of the country’s most renowned metal AM facilities, and the entire supply chain for metal additive manufacturing had already sprung up around the greater metro area.

But metal 3D printing in Pittsburgh wasn’t connected in a way where key players could drive economic advancements, say Barnes. “If all we did was connect that supply chain, we could bring really great efficiency to metal additive and not only reduce the entire time to produce metal parts, but also reduce the expenses associated with it.”

Outside of universities and military facilities, there hadn’t been a central hub of activity focused on metal production manufacturing, until Neighborhood 91. Today, neighbors include companies using metal AM to make parts for their own products, make metal AM parts as a service, develop metal AM technologies, and supply raw metal materials, part testing and analysis, along with R&D.

Aiming to be the Silicon Valley of metal additive manufacturing, Neighborhood 91 companies can now develop and apply metal AM on a campus that offers them shared resources and opportunities to collaborate.

“The companies that come here want to be part of an ecosystem,” says Barnes. “They want to work with their neighbors and figure out how to do things better, faster, and cheaper together.”

The first company to locate at Neighborhood 91 was locomotive manufacturer Wabtec, which uses the space to house its innovative aluminum 3D printing for locomotive braking systems. Its 12,000-square-foot space houses several large-format laser powder bed fusion 3D printers that the company uses to manufacture its Metroflexx and Regioflexx brake solutions for mass transit, intercity, regional, and high-speed trains.

Metal AM enables Wabtec to make more efficient brakes that are lighter, easier to repair, faster to fabricate, and sustainable in that the process significantly reduces energy consumption compared to casting and forging, the company says.

The next company to move into the neighborhood was contract additive manufacturer Cumberland Additive. With headquarters in Texas, Cumberland joined Neighborhood 91 to expand its capability to deliver 3D-printed serial production parts to its aerospace, defense, and space-sector customers.

Employing four at its 17,000 square-foot space with plans to grow headcount, Cumberland says it will be able to tap into a skilled workforce that is part of Pittsburgh’s manufacturing culture to quickly grow its production capacity.

“Another advantage to 3D printing that Cumberland is unlocking at Neighborhood 91 is digital transparency,” says Bill Freyvogel, Cumberland Additive’s VP of business development, meaning the company can collaborate with its Texas site and leverage resources remotely across various locations.

Cumberland houses a Nikon SLM Solutions’ 500 quad-laser metal 3D printer and late last year partnered with JEOL, a Japanese equipment manufacturer, to install another metal 3D printing technology, an electron-beam metal 3D printer to offer additional material diversity. A relative newcomer to the additive manufacturing machine market, JEOL’s collaboration with Cumberland represents the North American debut of its electron beam metal AM technology, which will focus on fabricating parts in titanium, nickel, and copper.

HAMR Inc., a materials-focused R&D company, focuses on transitioning academic and early-stage metal technology out of the lab and into the hands of its Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and commercial partners. HAMR brings materials development expertise to Neighborhood 91, along with a large format cold spray metal 3D printing system from SPEE3D.

HAMR says it become a neighbor not only to leverage other tenants’ capabilities but to take advantage of the legacy capabilities of the broader Pittsburgh region, including universities, manufacturers, and other government and research entities now exploring metal additive manufacturing.

Current residents also include custom signet ring company The Future of Jewelry and metal part testing and analysis company RJ Lee Group.

Consolidated Metal Innovation

What Neighborhood 91 offers these and future residents goes beyond collaboration and shared infrastructure, like conference room and shop air.

“We’ve learned a lot about what an advanced manufacturing campus needs to look like,” says Jennifer Coyne, director of programs at The Barnes Global Advisors, which serves as strategic consultants for the project. “There are heightened efficiencies in how the building are designed and organized.”

The campus is becoming the focus of government funding, such as the new, multi-million-dollar Department of Defense project called Resilient Manufacturing Ecosystem (RME) to prove the concept of a self-contained metal fabrication facility that could be readily duplicated domestically or abroad to meet the DoD’s mission and supply chain requirements.

Manufacturers in automotive and other industries are touring the campus to see metal AM’s capabilities first-hand.

Unlike facilities at metal 3D printer makers, Barnes says part of the appeal of Neighborhood 91 is that it embraces all the various technologies in the field and can provide an agnostic opinion on metal AM and how to apply it.

Rather than a showroom, Barnes stresses that Neighborhood 91, above all else, is a production environment. “At some point, you have to sell 3D printers based on the fact that you’re making parts,” he says. “Part manufacture is where the innovation is going to come from. The rapid innovation that we saw in printers is going to taper off, and it’s all going to be about producing parts better, faster, cheaper.”

Despite the fact that Neighborhood 91 had planned to be larger than it is by now, with the pandemic, tariffs, and interest rates impacting its growth, those same pressures affecting the supply chain actually reinforce the goal of the neighborhood; developing a resilient domestic manufacturing ecosystem.

Still, the projections are that this industrial park will create nearly 6,000 jobs over the next decade while generating about $2.2 billion in wages.

In the coming months, the Neighborhood plans to welcome an additive manufacturer that specializes in mass-producing metal parts for the medical industry. “And so the more that we produce on campus, the more it will drive people to the campus,” says Coyne.

With 185 more acres to fill, Neighborhood 91 is seeking out more like-minded companies to join its supply chain ecosystem, manufacture parts, and drive innovation. The next building, a multi-resident twin of the first, is projected to have a workforce development center to keep improving the

“Neighborhood 91 represents a bold vision for the future of manufacturing,” says Barnes, “leveraging collaboration, innovation, and strategic positioning to drive economic growth and establish Pittsburgh as a global leader in additive manufacturing.”