Additive manufacturing technologies provide great benefits to their users – especially if the technology is used in terms of direct manufacturing for end-use part production purposes. Consequently, the interest in additive manufacturing has been increasing in the fields of science, industry and education. In this context, the Direct Manufacturing Research Center (DMRC) performs research in additive manufacturing with the aim to enable and improve its usage in terms of direct manufacturing. Thereby, the results support the industry and also adapt educational measures. The DMRC is an institution in the faculty of mechanical engineering at the University of Paderborn. Its structure is flexible and very interdisciplinary; depending on the currently handled research topics, the constellation of chairs participating in the DMRC can be changed. At time, within the DMRC 9 different chairs with 11 professors and a large number of researchers work together. The research projects at the DMRC are (co-)funded by the industrial partners and by public sources as well. Additionally, all DMRC-projects are guided and controlled by industry partners. This allows all partners to generate a large amount of output, especially in regard to science.