$15,000 Vt. BGS grant awarded to Mechanical Advantage

MIDDLEBURY | Gov. Phil Scott and the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services (BGS) notified the Addison County Economic Development Corporation (ACEDC) that the organization was awarded a $15,000 grant through the Vermont Building Community Grant program to benefit Mechanical Advantage, LLC, a machine shop located at 2106 U.S. Route 7 (south) in Middlebury. Depending on appropriations by the Vermont General Assembly, the program annually awards around $200,000 in matching grants statewide to the regional development corporations for capital costs associated with the renovation, development of facilities, and machinery and equipment for economic development projects. The grant program requires that the funds be essential to the project's success, that projects be "shovel ready," demonstrate job creation or retention potential and, the business must provide a dollar-for-dollar match. The grant was used to help purchase two, five-axis rotary units to be installed on existing CNC mills at Mechanical Advantage. Five-axis rotary units are motorized fixtures to hold material such that five sides can be machined without repositioning it. The need for five-axis rotary fixtures is two-fold: they increase the ease and speed of manufacturing large complex parts and increase the machining capacity of the shop. "ACEDC was both proactive and instrumental in the process of applying for a BGS grant," according to Dave Cole, president of Mechanical Advantage. "We were thrilled to be selected as a recipient of grant funding for the purchase of the five-axis units that have already enabled us to win jobs we would previously have turned away due to their complexity," Cole added. Implementing this technology on parts we were previously doing in multiple operations has reduced the machining process to one operation. Additionally, our employees have the satisfaction of using state-of-the-art technology and know that the state of Vermont supports that kind of progress."

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$15,000 Vt. BGS grant awarded to Mechanical Advantage

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