Additive manufacturing

Mechanical Fabrication

Expertise in Action

Our 33,000-square-foot science-based manufacturing and prototyping facility serves all of APL to provide full-spectrum support, from conceptual R&D through configured hardware production.

Our team of skilled scientists, engineers, and technicians provides bespoke manufacturing solutions to meet our nation’s biggest challenges. We pride ourselves on quality, flexibility, and responsiveness.

Engineered materials fabrication

Capabilities

Formative and Subtractive Fabrication

We combine highly skilled fabricators and engineers with an array of state-of-the-art machining, welding, laser cutting, waterjet cutting, sheet metal forming, and system assembly to produce high-quality, complex prototype parts and assemblies.

  • Machining, electrical discharge machining (EDM), sheet metal, welding
  • Mechanical system integration
  • Integrated quality control and assurance

Materials and Process Engineering

We develop novel solutions to complex fabrication challenges by combining material engineers, fabricators, and artists with expertise in material selection, process development, reverse engineering, and fabrication of composite, bonded, and complex molded polymer parts and assemblies.

  • Applications: biomechanical, spaceflight, unique packaging, and prototyping
  • Wide range of reverse engineering methodologies

Additive Manufacturing

We provide expertise in material development and customization, design optimization, production, and characterization of metal and polymer parts made via 3D manufacturing.

  • Diverse set of machines and methodologies to support unique applications
  • Design optimization for additive manufacturing
Examples of parts fabricated at Johns Hopkins APL
Mechanical fabrication

[What I love about APL is] the range of challenging programs that I am able to impact. Where else can you in the same day support a spacecraft program, a biomechanics program, and something used in the ocean environment?

Paul Biermann, Materials and Process Engineer and Master Inventor*
Paul Biermann

*APL’s Master Inventor Award honors staff members who have demonstrated a career of innovation with 10 or more patents based on APL intellectual property.

Contact Us

Mechanical Fabrication Inquiries

Darrell Zinn and Joseph Walters
research@jhuapl.edu
Learn More
This image illustrates the selective laser melting of the powder bed in an APL logo.

Design, Engineering, and Fabrication →

At APL, our culture of taking bold risks, brought to life through inventive prototyping and informed by deep technical expertise, is the basis for our efforts to not merely anticipate the future, but create it.


Learn more about Design, Engineering, and Fabrication

Mission Area