Fast Radius Opens Tech Center on Chicago’s Goose Island

Fast Radius has opened its newest manufacturing technology campus on Goose Island in Chicago, a location that includes a microfactory and software technology center. The site includes space for software development, manufacturing technology development, a customer experience center and general offices. The location is designed to help Fast Radius expand its manufacturing technologies, software capabilities and capacity available through the Cloud Manufacturing Platform.

In 2018, the World Economic Forum (WEF) recognized Fast Radius’ first Chicago microfactory as one of the nine best factories in the world, implementing technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution at scale — from design to manufacturing to fulfillment. The Goose Island facility replicates that microfactory operating model, offering CNC machining and industrial additive manufacturing (AM), including carbon digital light synthesis and HP multi jet fusion technology. The microfactory will produce component parts for companies across a variety of industries, including automotive, electric vehicles, medical and health care devices, and consumer goods.

Fast Radius says its Cloud Manufacturing Platform integrates a suite of software products and a network of state-of-the-art factories. The company’s software and services are designed to help customers design component parts, optimize them for production, and make them when and where they’re needed, providing transparency through the production life cycle and supply chain.

All Fast Radius microfactories and the company’s network of suppliers are connected into its Cloud Manufacturing Platform. Customers are able to collaborate on part designs and gather real-time intelligence. They are then able to make and fulfill parts where and when they want, thereby increasing the sustainability of their work and eliminating wasteful logistics steps along the way.

Fast Radius’ microfactory network — including a microfactory in UPS’ Worldport facility in Louisville, Kentucky — has served more than 2,000 global customers. Customers such as Rawlings, Aptiv and Satair are already using Fast Radius’ microfactories and Cloud Manufacturing Platform for cost-effective production and management of industrial-grade parts.