BARNESVILLE — Advanced Manufacturing Labs in Barnesville brings cutting-edge technology to the village, making complex products for high-profile organizations, such as the U.S. Army.

Advanced Manufacturing Labs, or AMfg, initially focused on washout tooling, which is a technique for producing hollow tools or components using 3-D printing around a core of sand that can be washed out once the piece is complete.

Chief Operating Officer Luke Phalen has a background deeply rooted in engineering and advanced manufacturing, spending his career at the intersection of the two. He described his work as engineering innovation, business and leadership, tackling complex problems and delivering solutions. Phalen graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Akron and has spent 15-20 years with exposure to advanced manufacturing but more focus on it in the past 10 years. Phalen and business partner Rick Lucas, chief adviser and a native of Barnesville, founded AMfgs Labs last summer.

Phalen feels like with his past career experience, he had learned enough about the industry and was ready to start this venture. He described the company as a product development company at its core, doing advanced manufacturing.

“Our main goal is to take new technologies or immature technologies, develop those and commercialize them,” he said.

Phalen described advanced manufacturing as modern-day production techniques and innovation and leverage technologies, such as additive advanced materials and automation.

He said additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, has been around a long time but has gotten a lot of attention in the past five to 10 years. He cited other forms of advanced manufacturing that are starting to gain traction, which creates a lot of opportunity.

“I think that the future of advanced manufacturing is pivotal to our country’s economic prosperity,” he said. “People will ask, ‘How do you compete with China and make stuff a third of the cost?’ And I’d say my answer is elegantly simple. We just manufacture smarter.”

He added that by leveraging new technologies and innovation, the company can make products more efficiently, precisely and sustainably.

Phalen described the company as unique and said that it does not have many direct competitors. He explained that it is unique because if there is a new technology that comes out that is not ready for mass production, the company would take the technology, develop it and commercialize it, but wouldn’t actually produce products there.

He added that the company may put it in a different facility, perhaps in Barnesville, to do manufacturing.

He noted most companies don’t have that sort of business plan, so the company doesn’t have a ton of competition. The company is not trying to compete with people who are manufacturing products additively at scale, but rather it is trying to manufacture them differently.

Overall product cost can compete with Chinese labor by making processes smarter and more efficient, which he thinks is going to happen more from a cost perspective and from a control and quality perspective.

The industry is always working on different projects. At one point it could be working on armor piercing ammunition and the next making medical devices, so it’s not monotonous.

Phalen has worked with the military, Logistics Agency, Missile Defense Agency, Department of Energy, NASA, big businesses, aerospace and automotive industries at his last job, while AMfg Labs has worked with the Department of Defense.

AMfg Labs’ peak project is its contract with the U.S. Army developing fully dense, complex shaped tungsten carbide parts through low pressure injection molding. The company used the process to innovate and come up with a way to produce the complex parts with the difficult but ideal material.

“This project is game changing for our nation’s defense, specifically in armor piercing projectile space,” Phalen said. “To kind of scope out the project a little more broadly, it’s to develop this new material. It’s an ideal material. It’s an enabling material for the Army, but it’s traditionally very hard and very difficult to manufacture.”

Phalen noted that because the industry works in cutting-edge technology, which is pretty rare in a geographical location like Barnesville, the industry is attractive, since usually that technology is used in a large city or major university.

“You get exposure to all these different industries if you work here, which is unique and really cool, and I think it is attractive to hire people,” Phalen said. “It’s exciting. I think it’s great for the community and as we continue to grow, we’re going to continue to hire.”