My practicum was completed at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Chandler, where I worked in the additive manufacturing lab. Northrop Grumman is a global aerospace and defense company responsible for a wide range of advanced systems and platforms. The additive manufacturing lab supports engineering programs across the company by producing both flight and non-flight hardware using industrial Stratasys FDM printers. Materials used in production included high-performance aerospace-grade thermoplastics such as ULTEM 9085, Nylon 12CF, Antero, ABS-M30, ASA, Polycarbonate, and TPU, each chosen based on the mechanical, thermal, and certification requirements of the specific part.
I first became aware of this opportunity after attending an information session hosted by Northrop Grumman. After the session, I reached out directly to the organizer to express my interest and was later invited to interview for the co-op position. For future SGC Scholars looking for a practicum site, I would strongly recommend attending employer information sessions whenever possible. Companies at these events are actively looking for students, which makes conversations feel much more natural and approachable than cold outreach. I would also encourage students not to hesitate to follow up afterward, even if there is not an open application posted yet. Reaching out while the interaction is still recent can help establish a more personal connection and show genuine interest. Aerospace and defense industry sites can be especially valuable for science and engineering students because the work is tied directly to real production with real operational consequences, creating a learning environment that feels very different from classroom projects.
My responsibilities grew substantially over the course of the term. I began with foundational tasks such as support removal and post-processing, then gradually took on printer maintenance, inventory management, and eventually full print setup and optimization using GrabCAD Print and Insight software. By the end of the practicum, I was able to manage most of the lab’s production workflow independently. That responsibility was put to the test when I operated the lab on my own for an entire week while my coworker was out. Beyond day-to-day operations, I also contributed to several engineering efforts. I identified a fire safety concern in the adjacent machine shop where metal chips from bandsaws were accumulating near electrical outlets, then independently designed, prototyped, and iterated a custom outlet cover that is now installed and actively used in the shop. I also performed cost analyses for multiple internal programs by estimating material usage, machine time, and labor requirements to help engineering teams plan and budget additive manufacturing requests. In addition, I began scoping a redesign of FCDC manifolds intended to improve manufacturability through additive methods.
Working in an industrial additive manufacturing environment gave me a much deeper understanding of polymer material science and its engineering applications than coursework alone could provide. Selecting the right material for a given part requires balancing mechanical strength, thermal resistance, chemical compatibility, and, in the case of flight hardware, certification requirements. I also developed a practical understanding of FDM process variables and how print orientation, layer height, infill density, and support strategy affect the structural properties of a finished part. Watching experienced operators troubleshoot problems and make process decisions also showed me how much manufacturing knowledge comes from hands-on experience and intuition built over time.
One of the most unexpected outcomes of this practicum was the appreciation I gained for the manufacturing side of aerospace engineering. As a student, most of my academic experience has focused on design and analysis. Spending a term in a production environment made it clear that manufacturing is deeply connected to the engineering process itself. Design decisions are constantly shaped by what can realistically be built, assembled, tested, and produced efficiently, which gave me a much broader perspective on how engineering works in practice. Understanding those manufacturing constraints, along with the costs and timelines associated with them, is something that deserves a much larger role in engineering education than it often receives in a classroom setting.
This experience did not fundamentally change my career goals, as I still plan to pursue aerospace engineering and the areas of the field that originally interested me. However, it gave me a much more complete understanding of what engineering work in industry actually looks like. The gap between what engineering students learn in class and what practicing engineers do professionally is very real, and this practicum helped narrow that gap in a way that will remain valuable regardless of where my career ultimately leads.