EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — A “DMG Hybrid”, a “Flex Cell Robot”, and a “Coordinate Measurement Machine” – if you are walking inside the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, then that is just part of what you will come across.
The Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology – or CCAT – is a non-profit organization that employs around 40 people, many of them engineers who are dedicated to aiding manufacturing companies worldwide. Ron Angelo, the president and CEO of CCAT said, “How do we take technology and get it into the hands of the people that need it? That’s what matters here.”
Essentially CCAT serves as a launchpad to share technology practices with manufacturing companies. Colette Ruden, a senior engineer at CCAT said, “CCAT is a technology and demonstration center as well as an advance tech center to support the industrial base.” Angelo made a comparison by saying, “We want to teach people to fish, we want to build out the solutions here but get it out to the marketplace and help these small companies grow.”
CCAT’s 25,000 square feet of lab space houses an array of the most cutting-edge 3D printers, which make it look like something out of a science fiction movie.
Angelo said, “We have customers all over the country and different parts of the world, but we focus on Connecticut. Connecticut is the epicenter of so much that happens in the industrial base.” Standing just steps away from a “Hexagon Arm” that’s used for manufacturing inspection practices, Angelo added, “we say the future is now and that’s the mission, make everyone else better – that’s what our mission is, to make others better.”
Jimmy Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at jaltman@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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