Humtown Products Will Build 3-D Labs in Leetonia
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio – Mark Lamoncha has seen the future at the University of Northern Iowa and will bring it to Leetonia – with the help of the Columbiana County Port Authority and Youngstown State University.
And support from the Youngstown Business Incubator and AmericaMakes.
Humtown Products, owned by Lamoncha, will occupy the former network operations center, 120 Industry St., in World Trade Park, just outside Leetonia. Humtown entered a one-year lease Monday with the port authority to occupy the structure and install an S-Max+ industrial production 3-D printer.
The S-Max+ prints large complex sand cores and mold packages directly from CAD (computer-assisted design) data, eliminating the need for physical pattern or tooling, Lamoncha and Adam Keller explained to the port authority board.
Lamoncha is president and CEO, Keller training and development specialist.
While the terms of the lease call for Humtown to pay the port authority $24,090 for the year — $7.50 per square foot – it will instead modify and update the 3,212 square feet, incurring $52,050 in expenses to do so. Besides installing new doors and removing walls, the expense entails plumbing, electrical and HVAC work.
The 3,212 feet consists of a 2,824-square-foot warehouse (including two laboratories) and 388 feet of office space.
Humtown Products, legally Humtown Pattern Co., was founded in 1959 as a foundry to build sand molds in which machine parts were cast for industrial giants in agriculture, construction, national defense and heavy industry such as Ford Motors Co., Caterpillar, Cummins Engines, GE, Parker-Hannifin and Honeywell.
In 1980, Humtown began using CNC patterns but it was still subtractive manufacturing.
With 3-D, or additive, manufacturing, both the costs and time it takes to create parts is greatly reduced, Lamoncha and Keller told the board.
Its growth since the end of the Great Recession has been rapid and its space at 44708 Columbiana-Waterford Road, Columbiana, insufficient for its needs, Lamoncha told the port authority board. “I wish we’d been founded in an industrial park,” he said. In addition to its buildings, it has 52 trailers to support its operations.
The S-Max+ to be installed is a used 3-D printer funded in part through a grant Youngstown State secured, Lamoncha said.
A new S-Max+, which weighs 16 tons, runs in the neighborhood of $2 million. YSU engineering students will be given time to learn on it – as many as three days a week when classes are in session — and YSU will later name an intern for Humtown to employ.
“We’re going to learn together,” the owner of Humtown said.
Five Humtown employees will work in the World Trade Park building at the outset but that could rise to as many as 12 or 15 if demand dictates its operation 24 hours a day, Lamoncha said.
In other business, the board renewed the leases of several tenants that include Precision Powders (BPI Inc.), which occupies 13,300 square feet in the port authority building, 1250 St. George St.; MSE LLC, which occupies 648 feet in the port authority building; Heritage Thermal and Heritage Environmental Services, with buildings and more than three acres just east of 1250 St. George St.; Patterson Process Equipment, Precesion Finning & Bending and Shamrock Enterprises.
All will pay higher rent to cover the rising costs of utilities, Executive Director Penny Traina said.
She also reported that health insurance premiums for port authority employees are higher, 11.9% annualized, for the upcoming 15 months — $11,900 instead of $9,500.
Property insurance, however, dropped $13,000 for the same coverage as before.
Traina shopped four agencies for group health care coverage, she informed the board, and chose to remain with Anthem. She shopped three agencies for property coverage and stayed with Minor-Cooper in East Liverpool.
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Pictured: The S-Max+ 3-D printer.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
