FRC-East is engaged in several research projects with industry under the umbrella of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADA). Research work includes the following two projects devoted to sheet metal forming and composite tools printed built on two different large format printers; the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM-CI) machine manufactured by Cincinnati, Inc. (CI) and the Large Scale Additive Manufacturing (LSAM) machine manufactured by Thermwood, Inc. Both AM machines build parts by melting pelletized thermoplastic materials and extruding & compacting the material through an injection molding sprue and deposition nozzle assembly mounted on a gantry system.