BNC participated the Automotive Hungary Trade Exhibition Budapest in 2017 and 2018. As part of the “Tech-together” program, quiz competitions were organized touching a wide range of technical subjects. These competitions were very popular among the attending university students. The most active team of the 2018 competition was the team from the University of Szeged, Faculty of Engineering, the prize of which was a dedicated neutron hands-on-training course at BNC. This course took place on 19 September. 

Lectures were given by the local experts on the use of neutrons for materials research as well as on several case studies of various industrial applications of neutron techniques so far achived world-wide. In a short presentation the goals of the Sine2020 EC project were imparted.

As part of this industry-focused training the technology transfer of BNC to a medium size company (Mirrotron Ltd.) was also demonstrated. Mirrotron Ltd. is a spin-off company on the BNC campus, a typical high-tech SME of nearly 40 employees to manufacture nuclear components mainly for research installations. The trainees had the opportunity to visit Mirrotron’s industrial scale production, among others, the high through-put magnetron sputtering stations producing supermirror coatings for neutron guides. Also high-performance metrology instruments were shown in operation at Mirrotron Ltd. to adjust large (tens of meters) mechanical systems to a few micrometers precision.The practical work was conducted by the local instrument scientists. Groups of six were formed (5 students+1 university professor) and rotated around six BNC instruments to demonstrate the application of wide angle neutron diffraction, small angle neutron scattering, neutron reflectometry, prompt gamma and neutron activation analysis as well as neutron imaging.

       The University of Szeged students together with local experts in front of the BNC reactor building following the hands-on-training