First Annual QCAM Summer Camp Highlights

Now that we are in our second year of work with the Consortium on Enabling In- and Ex-Situ Quality Control of Additive Manufacturing (QCAM) (a DOE NNSA Minority Serving Institute Partnership Program award recipient) and considering that this month we celebrate Native American Heritage, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight what we feel has been one of the most meaningful and rewarding experiences both our students and faculty had during the first year our project.
Thanks to the arduous work of our QCAM Co-PI, Scott Halliday, and his team at the Navajo Technical University’s Center for Advanced Manufacturing; this past May QCAM was able to send 14 students from diverse ethnicities and several faculty/staff from PVAMU, NMSU, & NTU to spend 2 weeks at the Navajo Tech campus within the Navajo Nation of Northwest New Mexico during the first annual QCAM Summer Camp Workshop. While there, students spent their time engaged in Metal AM safety training, Metal AM machine operation on a DED machine, EDM machine operation, dimension measurement using portable CMM, and finally quality control of the printed parts using in- and ex-situ nondestructive testing methods such as CT scanning, ultrasonic testing, thermal imaging, and acoustic emission. Finally performing materials testing using tensile testing machine and Digital Imaging Correlation system, and microscopy. More importantly, this workshop gave the students, faculty, and staff the unique opportunity to experience first-hand the rich culture and heritage of the Navajo Nation.
With all that in mind, we are honored to share with you the following video that highlights this amazing experience and will hopefully give you better insight into just one aspect of what it is we hope to accomplish with the QCAM Consortium