ANNOUNCER: This program is made by MPT to enrich the diverse communities throughout our state and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.

* HOST: What's made in Maryland?

You might be surprised.

From mom and pop shops, to advanced hi-tech operations, amazing things are being made all around the state.

Coming up... A jet engine with no moving parts...

Logos that have gone to the moon... Cakes that lift up a local community...

Bombers that helped win the war... And wood, metal, and strings that rock our world.

All this next, on the show that shows what's made in Maryland.

Made in Maryland is brought to you by.... Offering big bank capabilities and boutique bank care, CFG Bank supports businesses of all sizes and industries, including manufacturing, across Maryland.

We are CFG Bank, your success is our business.

This program is in part made possible through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente, which has been serving the Maryland community with high-quality health care for over 35 years.

Maryland Department of Commerce.

Maryland, Open for Business.

And by...

HOST: Did you know that nearly 4,000 manufacturers call Maryland home?

Hi, I'm Andrew Michael and we're going to show you some of the amazing things made right here in the state.

Here at the Baltimore Museum of Industry a proud legacy of making things is all around us.

And today, Maryland manufacturing is still being powered by pioneers and visionaries, some of whom you're about to meet.

They employ a highly-skilled workforce of more than a 100,000 people, and are propelled by a wide array of digital technologies and automation.

* Later in the show we'll visit a company whose designs help create identity for brands around the world.

But first, we look at a remarkable advancement that is poised to redefine aviation, a jet engine that uses pressure waves instead of spinning turbines.

Let's go to Hyattsville where the team at Wave Engine Corporation is bringing a next-generation jet propulsion system to market.

[loud pop] DAANISH MAQBOOL: This technology is called a pulse jet engine.

It's a jet engine that requires no moving parts.

So unlike traditional engines that have lots of rotating machinery, this is an engine that works on pressure waves.

And that actually has a big advantage because now you have no moving parts all together.

So it's a very intriguing device.

ANDREW: Daanish Maqbool, CEO of Wave Engine, discovered this technology as a graduate student at the University of Maryland.

He learned that pulse jets were used by the Nazis in World War II to power their V1 rockets.

DAANISH: Historically, you can see what the Germans were doing.

They were getting to very high speeds with a bunch of tubes.

So, it's not something that we need to reprove or reinvent.

It's a matter of making it practical for real world everyday applications.

That is what we're after.

ANDREW: Daanish's team went to work reimagining this "old tech," and after two years of test firings and trial runs, their first jet engine was ready to fly.

DAANISH: Propulsion is actually the hardest thing to do in aviation.

if we can create a new propulsion source, we really open up the possibility for a new breed of aircraft if you have a different type of engine.

ANDREW: The engine is a hollow U-shaped tube.

Inside, when the fuel ignites, the resulting combustion forces air out the end of the tube.

Fresh air is then sucked back in where fuel is again injected, ignited, and hot gases are thrust out.

DAANISH: And this process keeps repeating.

Typically, it repeats about a hundred times per second.

And those intermittent jets of hot gas actually create thrust.

It's a jet engine.

It's an extremely mechanically simple jet engine.

ANDREW: To build an engine, pieces of sheet metal are cut and rolled into curved shapes.

They are welded together to form the tubes, and parts such as brackets to mount the engine onto an airframe, ports for fuel lines, and ignition components are also attached.

[humming of machine] CNC or Computer Numerical Control machining is ubiquitous in today's manufacturing.

Here, computer coded instructions tell the machine what to do.

For this job, aluminum blocks that will mount the engine to the airplane are precision cut and shaped.

A major part of the engine system is its electronics.

It is critical that modern aircraft engines be digitally controlled, and Wave designs, builds, and programs their own proprietary flight control systems.

Once built, it's ready to fly.

[engine hums] DAANISH: It's one thing to make advancements on the ground, it's another thing entirely to go to an engine that's flying on an actual aircraft.

When you're in the air, everything has to work.

Everything has to be reliable because there's a person flying on that thing.

It has to be safe.

ANDREW: As one of Maryland's many high-tech startups, Wave Engine has set its sights sky high.

Wave's ultimate objective is to carve out a niche powering smaller aircraft, and revolutionize that segment of the commercial aviation industry.

DAANISH: Today, if you want to travel fast, you have to have a jet engine and a jet engine costs a lot of money.

It's a very expensive, it's a very complicated machine.

If you were able to provide jet speeds with a power plant that is very simple, and cheaper than even a piston engine that's on small aircraft today, we think that would be a game changer for aviation.

ANDREW: Maryland is a launching pad for a host of innovations in manned and autonomous flight, and 15 of the top 20 aerospace and defense companies call it home.

Here, even the sky's no limit.

* Later, on Made in Maryland, a cakery that has found a recipe to success for stores from Safeway to Starbucks.

In the 19th Century, Baltimore's garment business boomed.

Since then, the evolving global marketplace brought many changes to this industry, but those that were able to adapt and change still remain.

Have you ever watched the Baltimore Orioles play and wondered, who makes those beautiful logos on the jerseys worn by the athletes and the fans?

Let's go to Owings Mills, and Lion Brothers, a company that has been making "identity" matter for more than a century.

[tapping of machines] * SUZY GANZ: We make all sorts of differentiated apparel identity.

It's the logos, it's the embellishment, it's the decoration that provides a sense of belonging.

It provides a sense of pride.

It provides a sense of expression.

Look at this Orioles jersey.

See the beautiful stitching in that Orioles logo or the bird?

That bird and that Orioles is designed here in Maryland.

ANDREW: Suzy Ganz is CEO of Lion Brothers, a company whose story began in 1899 with a facility in Baltimore, and continues here in one of its micro-facilities.

SUZY: We started out as one of America's first embroidery companies and actually we're the finest embroidery company still in the world.

But if you fast forward, what you really see is one of the companies that make apparel identity, which is this combination of material science, and automated manufacturing, and design.

ANDREW: Today, these machines are busy stitching badges and awards for one of Lion's most treasured clients, the Girl Scouts of America.

It's work that could have been lost to overseas competitors.

SUZY: This is a partnership that we've had with the Girl Scouts for almost a hundred years.

We collaborated and envisioned taking goods that were made overseas, redesigned for domestic manufacturing.

We created a micro facility, and the concept of really small versus really big was novel at the time.

ANDREW: Being able to manufacture both here at this micro plant, and overseas at a facility in China, has allowed Lion to remain competitive in the global marketplace, while keeping jobs in Maryland.

Making patches is fairly simple.

A worker unrolls a long sheet of fabric.

The embroidery machine is pre-set with a rainbow of thread.

Computer code for the job is programmed in and the stitching begins.

[tapping of machines] The needles sew according to pre-programmed "stitch files" which tell the machine what color thread to use, and the direction, density, and length of each individual stitch.

When stitching is complete, textile laser cutters do the trimming, and the product is ready to ship.

Through the years, Lion was there to help commemorate many firsts.

SUZY: World War I, we manufactured the embroidered insignia for the soldiers.

NASA, the first in space.

[over the radio] We have a lift off.

Lift off on Apollo 11.

SUZY: Lion's emblems were the emblems of the Apollo series.

STARR: 49!

The Super Bowl, Lion created the first insignia for the NFL Super Bowl.

The first brand for Champion with its C. Lion created the C for Champion back in the 1960's.

ANDREW: When it comes to identity, Lion sets the trends.

Each year they create thousands of designs for the world's most recognized brands.

SUZY: Here we have performance materials that may allow stretchability.

Here we have things that may allow for breathability.

Sometimes the design is truly an article of discovery.

When you look under UV light, the Jordan jumpman is reflected in the 23.

If you look at this Nike Air logo, we see this "Just Do It" embedded in.

So when you think of Lion, think of a company that has proudly been a part of the community for over 120 years.

The world's finest stitching still comes from Maryland.

[tapping of machine] ANDREW: Okay, it's time to play "Guess the Gadget."

Do you think you know what this is?

Here's a hint: It's something you might use to "cheat" when you're high in the sky.

We'll tell you what it is a little later.

But first, Maryland is known as a boater's paradise, but I bet you didn't know that the tables aboard many of the pleasure craft around the Chesapeake Bay are made in Maryland using a mesmerizing process known as vacuum thermoforming.

Let's go to SSI Custom Plastics in Hollywood for a "made-in-a-minute" look at how plastic sheets become nautical shapes.

* Workers start with blank sheets of UV resistant thermoplastic that can be heated and shaped.

They load the thermoforming machine with two sheets, a top and a bottom, and send them to an oven to cook.

Inside the oven, the sheets go from rigid to soft, and then rotate over to the molds.

Precision molds rise up to greet the pliable plastic and a vacuum is applied.

In the blink of an eye, the plastic is sucked in, taking the mold's shape.

It then cools and hardens, maintaining its new form.

Vacuum thermoforming is precise, automated, and highly repeatable.

* The table top is trimmed by a computer controlled router which uses a robotic arm to cut it to size [humming] and drill holes for mounting brackets and hinges.

And there you have it, a plastic table for a day on the water, made in Maryland.

ANDREW: Maryland manufacturing is vibrant, and diverse.

And Baltimore is a top-five city when it comes to economic opportunities for minorities.

One reason might be the entrepreneurs at DC Sweet Potato Cake, a bakery in Baltimore that is bringing jobs, and tasty treats, to the region.

APRIL RICHARDSON: DC Sweet Potato Cake is a woman-owned, black-owned manufacturer of baked goods.

ANDREW: April Richardson is CEO of this cozy production facility.

It was April's business partner, Derek Lowery, who turned the old southern staple, sweet potato pie, into sweet potato cake.

DEREK LOWERY: The DC Sweet Potato Cake is a family tradition and a family invention.

The recipe is original, made from my mother which I grew up on.

ANDREW: The cakes are made mostly by hand.

It starts with piles of sweet potatoes that the head baker washes, peels, and chops.

The potatoes, and Derek's "secret ingredients," are mixed in a huge bowl, forming the batter.

The baker transfers the goopy mixture into the filling machine, and the nozzles squirt just the right amount of batter into single-serving cake tins.

When enough are filled, the tins roll off into the walk-in oven and bake.

APRIL: These cakes are amazing.

When people like you, they love your story, they love your mission, they will buy our cake.

So it's really about a great product with great people.

ANDREW: The operation has a close-knit feel.

Derek is in charge of mixing the icing, a vanilla pecan cream cheese spread.

When the cakes have finished cooling, the frosting team spreads the icing, cake, after cake, after cake.

The packaging team fastens lids, attaches logos, and they're ready to ship.

DEREK: So try that.

DC Sweet Potato Cake has a cream cheese and pecan frosting that is excellent.

When the first bite hits your tummy, you feel happy.

You feel love.

ANGELA SOREY: So I come down here and I tried the cake.

Oh my God.

It was delicious.

SEONRA SHURON: Mm.

It's good.

ANGELA: The texture, the taste reminds you of sweet potato, but in a cake form.

DANNY SHURON: It's like my small little piece of heaven in my mouth.

ASHLEIGH FAY: It's important to have businesses like this open especially in this neighborhood.

DEBBIE SCHAEFER: Supporting minority female-owned businesses, that was the key thing that we liked about this place.

[Together] Mmmm.

- Oh my gosh, it's really good.

DEBORAH TURNIPSEED: If you love sweet potato pie, you're going to love this cake.

ANDREW: As a business lawyer, April Richardson had a mission: to take the small operation and scale it up.

APRIL: Stores like Safeway and Starbucks and Wegmans and Nordstrom picked up on just how amazing the product is.

We used to produce maybe a couple hundred cakes a week.

Now we're producing 30,000 to 50,000 cakes per month.

ANDREW: In moving to manufacturing, April envisioned more than just sweet profits, she also wanted to set an example to other minority businesses, to be the change.

APRIL: Our mission is: It's simple.

We bake.

It's what we do every day.

We love everyone that comes in through that door.

And we inspire.

It means that we're taking other companies along that look like us that want to be a manufacturer.

We think that we have the model for success in manufacturing and we simply want other minorities to follow along with us.

ANDREW: Expanding from a small retailer to a bonafide manufacturer is paying off.

DC Sweet Potato Cake is growing, and in stores all over the region, products are selling like hotcakes.

It's time now to Guess the Gadget!

So, do you know what this is?

It's a True Airspeed Computer, kind of a circular slide rule that helped airplane pilots to calculate ground speed, estimate fuel burn, or determine the effect of wind on their course.

A gadget like this would have been used in a Tadpole Clipper, like this one flying high above me here at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.

The plane was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company, our inaugural inductee into the "Made in Maryland Hall of Fame".

* ANDREW: Glenn Martin was a swashbuckling pilot during the early days of aviation.

In 1929 he moved to Middle River, near Baltimore, to build bombers for the U.S. Army Air Corps.

STAN PIET: Army Air Service at the time was looking for its own indigenous bomber aircraft, so they had a contract with Martin to build what was called the MB-1 or the Martin Bomber one.

ANDREW: When World War II broke out, Martin Aircraft was tooled up and ready to churn out big bombers for the war effort.

NARRATOR: Aluminum alloy, light and strong, put together like a fine watch.

ANDREW: One of Martin's finest planes was the B-26 "Marauder."

More than 5,000 of them were built in Maryland during the 1940's.

B-26 combat pilots were known as "Maraudermen," and the planes saw heavy action.

[plane engine roars] [rattle of artillery] While the men were off at war, women filled in.

Martin Aircraft was one of the first to hire women directly for the production lines.

* All the day long whether rain or shine * * She's a part of the assembly line * * She's making history, working for victory * * Rosie, brrrr, the riveter.

* STAN: By the middle of 1943, 35% of the workforce was female.

And they took over all the jobs that men could do.

And that included working on the line, working on engines, assembling things.

ANDREW: The plant was also integrated, and African American mechanics worked on the assembly lines that ran around the clock to make airplanes that helped the allies gain aerial supremacy and win the war.

* During and after the war, Martin produced many important aircraft for the defense of the United States and allies.

In the 1950's it turned to commercial aviation with the Four-O-Four twin engine model flown by TWA and Eastern Airlines.

The Four-O-Four offered a dignified flying experience for up to 44 passengers, with the amenities and stylish interior epitomized by the golden age of air travel.

In the sixties, Martin built the Titan rockets that powered NASA's Gemini manned space flight program, launching astronauts like Gus Grissom, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong into orbit.

ANDREW: The "hall of fame" legacy of Glenn L. Martin lives on in today's Lockheed Martin Corporation, based in Bethesda.

* Finally, let's meet our "Master Makers."

They are the luthiers whose gorgeous guitars are Maryland-made and world-played.

I'm talking about Paul Reed Smith and the skilled artisans who make this, the highly prized PRS Guitar.

Let's go to Stevensville to tour the plant and meet the master maker himself.

[guitar plays] PAUL REED SMITH: This is an electric guitar.

[strumming] And it's made in Maryland.

* It's the violin of our time.

Guitars are everywhere.

Our instruments have to look right, they got to play right, and they got to sound right.

[guitar plays] It's not so easy to do, but you get 400 determined people in a building and all hell breaks loose.

It's cool.

* JACK HIGGENBOTHAM: This is guitar manufacturing at PRS Guitars.

Now we're walking into the wood shop.

This is where the guitars are born.

We're known for our curly maple tops and we do a thing called book matching.

Ultimately this will join together and it'll make a beautiful top for a guitar.

In the past, we used to cut all of the guitar bodies by hand.

Technology gives us the ability to make a much more accurate guitar, a much more repeatable guitar.

These machines are computers controlling a routing machine, cutting guitar bodies or necks.

[high pitched hum] Coming off of CNC, hand sanding, making sure everything is shaped perfect, scratch free.

The necks are sitting here ready to go into a body.

Bodies are here, ready for their necks.

And what we have to do is very carefully fit that neck and body together, and that's what we're doing.

Two main things is making sure the neck angle is good, and that has to make sure that your strings are at the right height and the bridge is at the right height.

It takes a lot of skilled hand work to make that happen.

What we have is a guitar now.

The neck is made, the body is made.

This is that bookmatched top we look at.

So we're out of the wood shop, into the finish room.

* WALTER JIMENEZ: Cool.

So this color is going to actually be violet.

I put a very bright red on it, to kind of let the wood take it in.

I'm going to put the blue on it.

So you kind of see how there's like a transformation between the red and the blue.

Kind of turning it purple.

I think about it as a really cool art project, actually.

[hissing of air] And you can kind of see like the red doesn't turn completely purple.

It a little bit of purple violet-ish.

It's gorgeous.

* PAUL: It all came from making guitars in a one-man shop and then teaching that art to 400 people.

You know, when I first made a guitar for Carlos Santana, that was looking forward into what guitars could be in our industry.

* [playing Oye Como Va by Carlos Santana] * I'm sorry.

That's a Carlos melody!

* [Oye Como Va continues] For Carlos Santana to be playing a PRS was a huge deal.

He was the king of tone.

If you can get Carlos to play your guitars, you can sell guitars.

It's such a joy with Carlos Santana, and John Mayer, and Mark Tremonti, and Joe Walsh, David Grissom, and John McLaughlin, all these wonderful musicians playing our instruments.

[hiss of air] We don't say "made in USA," we say "made in Maryland."

There is some pride in this building about making it in Maryland.

This is really home.

* ANDREW: PRS Guitars is a rock star of manufacturing, one of many small businesses in Maryland that are taking local craftsmanship and bringing it to the world.

That's all for now.

Thanks for joining us for Made in Maryland .

If you have questions or comments or want to tell us what you make in Maryland, visit us at MPT.org, where you can also stream this show.

I'm Andrew Michael for Made in Maryland .

Thanks for watching.

Made in Maryland is brought to you by... Offering big bank capabilities and boutique bank care, CFG Bank supports businesses of all sizes and industries, including manufacturing, across Maryland.

We are CFG Bank, your success is our business.

This program is in part made possible through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente, which has been serving the Maryland community with high-quality health care for over 35 years.

Maryland Department of Commerce.

Maryland, Open for Business.

And By... Closed Captioning has been made possible by Maryland Relay, empowering those with hearing and speech loss to stay connected.

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