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Laboratories Manufacturing Assistance CenterManufacturing Assistance Center The Industrial Engineering Department of the University of Pittsburgh has recently been awarded a grant from the United States Department of Commerce to establish a Manufacturing Assistance Center (MAC) based on the concept of shared manufacturing, at the University Applied Research Center (U-PARC) in Harmarville, Pennsylvania. The concept of shared manufacturing involves the sharing of modern manufacturing equipment, facilities, technologies, and management systems by different manufacturers with similar needs. As part of an effort to increase the global competitiveness of area manufacturers and revitalize the Western Pennsylvania manufacturing community, the MAC will enable small and mid-sized organizations to evaluate in detail new manufacturing processes, technologies, equipment, and prototypes without large up-front costs. The MAC mission is to provide a state-of-the-art manufacturing systems facility for research, development, education, and training for the Western Pennsylvania manufacturing community. The MAC consists of a set of Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) machining tools for traditional machining operations, Electrical Discharge Machine tools (EDM), laser metalworking machine tools, automated material handling equipment, and robots. Computer Aided Design (CAD) work stations with solid modeling gives the MAC a strong product design capability. Several laboratories support the MAC: the machine tool laboratory showcases new processes and equipment; the metrology laboratory allows MAC clients to quantify dimensional integrity and quality and take steps towards continuous improvement of quality; the material tracking and automatic identification laboratory provides customers opportunity to investigate such technologies as bar codes, vision, voice, magnetic strip and radio frequency for material tracking and handling; the human issues laboratory provides means for developing new techniques for integrating people with the manufacturing workplace; the computer aided design laboratory gives user support in three-dimensional modeling, numerical code generation and CAD/CAM integration. The material tracking/automatic identification and the human issues laboratories are currently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Air Force Armstrong Laboratory. |
Engineers make things...
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