![]() "The people who work here are part craftsmen and part artists," said Gasho. ![]() Two student workers support the team: Marcos Gonzales, a pre-physiology major, and Shawn Iles, an undergraduate in optical sciences and engineering. According to Gasho, CNC makes the work more efficient for machining, but welding still is a fully manual job. In a mill, the tool spins while the part to be manufactured remains fixed, and a lathe rotates the part against a stationary tool. They rely on five manual lathes, five manual mills, one CNC lathe and four CNC mills. CNC stands for computer numerical control and allows machinists to make parts with great precision and maintain the same accuracy when producing duplicates. "Some come to us with fully fleshed-out drawings of what they need from us, others pull out a napkin sketch and ask, 'Can you please build this for me?'"įive machinists work in the shop, with two of them taking on the welding jobs. "Our customers may know the form and the fit of the parts they are looking for and what features they want, but usually have no idea of how to make the part," said Victor Gasho, URIC director. ![]() The team at the Machining and Welding Center prides itself on being a one-stop shop for researchers who need any type of equipment or fine instrument for their work, providing design from scratch and handling manufacturing and repair. "You could say that NIRCam is the glamor project here at our shop, but we're here to support research across the University." "To me, the award is a validation of what we do," said Doug Myers, a machinist and one of URIC's instrument maker/designers who has been fabricating and refining NIRCam parts since 2005. Over the past few years, the crew at the Machining and Welding Center – which is part of the UA Research and Instrumentation Center – has been busy building various parts of JWST's Near Infrared Camera, also called the NIRCam, which is the space telescope's prime instrument. NIRCam will peer deeper into the universe than any other instrument before. It's the first time the UA has been given the James Webb Space Telescope Significant Achievement Award. Welders and machinists at the University of Arizona's Machining and Welding Center have been recognized by NASA with an award for "extraordinary dedication and contributions" to the James Webb Space Telescope project.
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