This school maintains a well-equipped manufacturing laboratory containing both manual and computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools. However, while these machines are well suited for discrete production of parts, they do not provide a continuous process that can be run, altered and monitored. Consequently, laboratory efforts in statistical process control (SPC), process monitoring, and design of experiments (DOE) are unfortunately artificial. In light of today's increasingly competitive manufacturing environment, it is essential that engineering students are well trained in the entire manufacturing process and exposed to state-of-the-art process monitoring and control during their education. Such exposure enables them to more effectively make the transition from student to practicing engineer. This project has obtained some important components to an existing CNC lathe in the manufacturing laboratory that will allow a production run of process to be executed. These components include a wire straightener/cut-off machine and a pneumatic bar feeder. These two pieces of equipment allow the department's Cincinnati Milacron Talon CNC Lathe to be run in a production mode. A simple part program for a rotational element (e.g., a screw or an electrical terminal) can now be run for hundreds of pieces without human intervention. Students have access to a "process" that can be periodically sampled as part of an SPC exercise, disturbed as part of a DOE exercise or continuously monitored as part of a metrology exercise.
