🎙️ Nate Ames helps run a very clever program at Ohio State University. While the “Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence” is an official arm of the school, it functions more like a paid internship. Hundreds of students have worked on real projects from over 150 companies, learning not just skilled trades and engineering, but also how to work within the same type of corporate and team structures they’ll be plopped into when they graduate.
It’s like a trade school and an internship all in one—hands-on access to machines and project management—and it’s setting a template for future hybrid programs at universities around the country.
In this episode of TOOL OR DIE, Nate explains why universities have failed to keep up with the pace of American industry—and how CDME is getting young people up to speed. By running like a startup and building with undergrad students instead of just grad students, CDME is turning research into real products and students into deployable talent.
From running R&D projects for DARPA to building design-for-manufacture workflows with startups, CDME is rewriting the playbook for academic innovation and reshoring-ready manufacturing.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 – Intro and TOOL OR DIE updates
02:08 – Nate Ames joins: from machining entrepreneur to CDME leader
05:25 – What universities get wrong about product development
09:40 – How CDME runs like a job shop with students on the line
13:15 – Solving the “valley of death” between research and manufacturing
17:30 – Why DARPA cares about DFM—and what that means for startups
22:50 – Student-built parts that actually go into fielded defense products
28:00 – How CDME scales from prototypes to production without breaking the model
34:10 – What startups misunderstand about manufacturing
38:00 – The reshoring moment and what’s needed to sustain it
Key Topics:
Why academic R&D often fails to cross into real-world production
CDME’s unique model: acting like a job shop, building like a startup
Turning paid student labor into manufacturing muscle
Design-for-manufacturing (DFM) as a national security issue
Creating deployable talent pipelines, not just credentials
Bridging institutional knowledge with urgent, real-world problems
🔧 Learn more: cdme.osu.edu
Tool or Die is hosted by Joel Johnson, former journalist, corporate strategist, and builder of brands like Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and Wirecutter. Each week, he speaks with the people actually rebuilding American manufacturing—one machine, one company, one idea at a time.
Sponsor
This episode of TOOL OR DIE is brought to you by DOSS, the adaptive ERP.
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