Engineering Students Do Well at WESTEC

Representing Cal Poly Pomona at the SME WESTEC 2002 student competition were (from left) Stella Sasing, Young Tung, Michelle Tadang, William DeWitt and Anthony Vandersande. Participants who were not present for the photograph include Brian Miner, Hannibelle Entereso and Mark Wetzel.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers' (SME) WESTEC 2002 Advanced Productivity Exposition took place in March at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Known as North America's largest annual metalworking and manufacturing event, it also features a highly regarded student SME competition.

This year, Cal Poly Pomona's SME student chapter took home third place for its entry concerning the use of titanium in manufacturing.

"Titanium is gaining popularity in various industries (e.g. aerospace and biomedical), and there is still much to learn about the processes involved in its manufacturing," stated the group in their presentation report to the judging committee. "Being a refractory metal, the mechanism by which titanium takes on its rainbow of colors is interesting in its own right."

The presentation proved to be popular.

"The Cal Poly Pomona project drew a lot of attention from the industry," said Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering professor Phil Rosenkrantz. "Many people were interested in the experimentation that was done with anodizing titanium and several industry people dropped by just to meet our team members."