Quality Assurance/Quality Control

A NY State manufacturer of polishing pads for the semiconductor industry approached Cornell for assistance with a product improvement project. In partnership with a Cornell professor from Chemical Engineering, they identified the parameters affecting the performance of their polishing pads. The team developed new production procedures and in-house quality control measures, which helped the company manufacture higher quality products at a lower cost.

A new York state manufacturer of custom lenses and windows for Industrial and military applications, needed a way to pre-inspect the starting bulk optical materials in order to determine the initial quality of the substrates prior to manufacturing. A series of experiments were carried out on optical substrates using X-Ray CT scanning and Raman spectroscopy. The team determined that this method showed great promise for determining the quality of the substrate prior to investing time and money into the machining and finishing of the product.

More than 26 million Americans between the ages of 20 and 69 have high frequency hearing loss due to exposure to loud noises at work or in leisure activities. A small New York manufacturer of hearing protection is working to improve on that. They make hearing protection that is simple easy to wear and allows the user to hear normal speech while eliminating the dangerous sounds in the environment. The company sought help from the CCMR in selecting new materials that would increase the comfort level of their hearing protection allowing users to wear the projection longer during prolonged periods of hazardous noise levels. The CCMR helped the company develop a test method for evaluating alternative materials for the foam padding used on the ear cuffs of their hearing protection and headphone devices. A customized test method was developed and prototyped and a working test fixture built specifically to perform strength and air leakage testing on new ear cuff materials.