Factory for Advanced Manufacturing Education Lab
The Factory for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) Lab is located in Room 106, the heart of the Leonard Building. It is a 10,000-square foot-integrated high bay laboratory for teaching and research.
The main objectives of FAME are to reinforce the principles and theoretical concepts taught in the classroom and to introduce students to the equipment, procedures, and difficulties associated with common engineering processes.
The lab has most of the elements of a real manufacturing facility. It houses many diverse manufacturing processes including casting, welding, machining, forming, injection molding, and assembly systems. In addition, the lab includes automated high-tech facilities dealing with robotics and assembly featuring computer-integrated manufacturing cells and robots.
FAME is comprised of several specialized areas including:
HAAS Technical Education Center
The HAAS Technical Education Center was established in June 2000, through the generous support of HAAS Automation Inc. The center is the result of a unique alliance between Penn State, HAAS Automation, Inc., and the HAAS Factory Outlet, a Division of DSM Machinery.
The center provides students with state-of-the-art CNC machines for education and research and is equipped with:
- Six HAAS Control Simulators
- Eight HAAS CNC Machining Centers
- Four HAAS CNC Turning Centers
The availability of these machines for undergraduate and graduate education has led to significant revision to the manufacturing courses and curriculum, and gives the students real life experience with machines used in industry.
Metalcasting Area
The metalcasting area of the lab provides students with instructional experiences in metalcasting and the use of software tools for gating, risering, and solidification modeling. The laboratory uses a medium frequency coreless induction furnace for student instruction and experimentation with both ferrous and non-ferrous metals. A wide variety of casting and molding processes are used including green san casting, resin-bonded sand casting, the evaporative casting process, and permanent mold casting. Students gain valuable hands-on experience by undertaking the molding and casting themselves under the direction of a skilled technician and teaching assistant.
The metal casting lab also includes sand testing equipment, a pattern-making facility, and metallograph and carbon sulphur analysis instrumentation.
Welding Area
This area of the FAME lab provides students with instructional experience on conventional and non-conventional welding processes. The main objectives of the laboratory experiments are to reinforce the principles and theoretical concepts taught in the classroom and to introduce students to the equipment, procedures, and difficulties associated with the welding process.
The laboratory has six welding booths equipped with:
- ABB Robotic Welding Station
- CNC Plasma Cutting System
- Lincoln Electric GMAW Welder
- Lincoln Electric GTAW Welder
- Lincoln Electric Semi-automatic SAW Welder
- Lincoln Electric SMAW Welder
- Miller RSW Welder
- United Universal Testing Machine
Manual Machining Area
The manual machining area of the lab is used for conducting various machine tool-cutting experiments by undergraduate and graduate students. During several weeks of lab activities, student groups collect critical machining data while performing tool-cutting force experiments, tool-wear experiments, and orthogonal cutting force experiments.
This area is also used to fabricate the fixtures and tooling required to support unique research projects. The manual machining exposure our students receive from this area provides them an opportunity to better understand basic machining principles, methods, and procedures. Students who have this basic understanding can now implement this knowledge to develop a more profitable result.
The area includes:
- Three Bridgeport vertical milling machines
- Two drill presses
- Two Excell stereo microscope cameras
- One Hansvedt sinker EDM
- One Hansvedt wire EDM
- Seven LeBlond lathes
- Three Sig Lab cutting force data collection work stations
