Lawrence Livermore Lab Will Advise California Factories : Research: Small and medium-size businesses will benefit from new pact. The goal is peacetime use of defense know-how.

Furthering its effort to turn from missiles to microchips, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has entered into a novel agreement with a manufacturing technology center in Hawthorne: The lab will share its technical expertise and state-of-the-art facilities with small and medium-size manufacturers in California.

The pact is to be signed this morning in Hawthorne by Roger Werne, the lab’s head of engineering and technology transfer, and John Chernesky, executive director of the California Manufacturing Technology Center.

The center, run by the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, is charged with helping small manufacturing companies identify and solve their problems. Since it opened in August, 1992, its 26 staff engineers have worked with 15 Los Angeles area manufacturers in plastics, medical technology, aerospace and other fields.

The agreement with Lawrence Livermore is the first of its kind between a national lab and one of the seven manufacturing technology centers the Commerce Department operates nationwide.

“We have some expertise in manufacturing that we think is quite special,” Werne said in a telephone interview. “The (center) is developing a network that will help us get those technologies out to where they can do some good for the economy.”

Chernesky said in a statement that the agreement will enable California companies to “remain competitive and secure the cutting edge” while developing new jobs.

Like its counterparts nationwide, the Lawrence Livermore lab, east of San Francisco in Livermore, has been searching for the best ways to use its defense-related expertise now that the Cold War has ended.

The lab, supported by the Department of Energy, spent 80% of its resources developing nuclear weapons 15 years ago. Today it devotes two-thirds of its time to peacetime pursuits in energy, biotechnology, transportation and technology transfer, or in helping companies develop technologies.

Many projects are already under way. Wednesday, the lab and a Denver company agreed to develop an advanced mammography device using weapons technology. It is also working with General Motors Corp. on lasers for sheet metal work, and with Intel Corp. on the next generation of computer chips.