CAD/CAM Wins the Race at NASCAR Tech
Universal Technical Institute, with campuses from coast to coast, has been giving countless young men and women the training they need to fill jobs as technicians within the transportation industries. At their campus in Mooresville, North Carolina, in addition to their core automotive training, they offer a curriculum aimed at satisfying the needs of that region’s renowned automotive racing industry. Called NASCAR Tech because of its location at Race City, USA, the school includes CNC machining technology among its courses of study.
The CNC program at UTI’s NASCAR Tech campus runs for 36 weeks. In addition to several manual mills and lathes, students have access to three CNC vertical machining centers, and two CNC turning centers. The CAD/CAM lab uses Mastercam. Business alliance partners, who also serve as their advisory council, have provided the school with a lot of their own equipment, in addition to recommending other equipment and programs, such as Mastercam for creating the tool paths for CNC machining operations.
You can read about the development of the machining training program in this cover story from Today’s Motor Vehicles: NASCAR Tech Adds CNC Training.
These alliance partners would like the school to duplicate what they have in their own companies, so when the graduates become their employees, they are already familiar with both the equipment and software and will become productive for them right from the outset. Students are shown how to use the various features of Mastercam software to optimize feed rates and extend the life of their tooling.
The curriculum includes a broad range of machining concepts that they can take with them to employers who are waiting for them at graduation, whether used for a racecar headed for a track, a medical device headed for a hospital, or a precision component headed for outer space. The goal of NASCAR Tech is to train them to obtain an entry-level position in any field requiring CNC programming and machining skills.