page 501 from the Programming Guide (Appendix 4) should get you most of the way ....

The following loop captures the contents of an alphanumeric element or variable up to
the first alphabetic character:
var vQuit as Int
var i as Int
var just_the_digits as String
vQuit = 0
i = 1
While(i <= @Len(filenumber)) And (vQuit = 0))
{
If @Asc(@Mid(filenumber, i, 1)) > 57 Then
{
just_the_digits = @Left(filenumber, i - 1)
vQuit = 1
}
}
Appendix 4 — The Standard ASCII Character Set
502
If the form element or variable contained "12345MD-D6," just_the_digits would be set
to "12345." (Compare this with @Num(filenumber) which, in this case, would return
"123456.")
You can use @Asc to loop through a string and convert all lowercase letters to
uppercase — and vice versa. This is because every uppercase letter of the alphabet is
exactly 32 lower in the ASCII table than its lowercase counterpart. (For example: "A"
= 65 and "a" = 97.) But with Sesame’s ToUpper() and ToLower() functions, you
shouldn’t have to go to such trouble.

Actually it's not an acronym, it's just an abbreviation, since an acronym is a word--for instance, SATA. USB, on the other hand, is not an acronym because it is never pronounced as a word.

Do you have only a small number of different data items? In your example, if you had another record where Element 1 was Fairchild Manufacturing Company you would wind up with both records having the same abbreviation.

A related problem is where people don't always put the name in the exact same way.  Years ago I had a database that had something like four variations of Sugar Land, a city slightly south of Houston (named after Imperial Sugar, which has its headquarters there).

An easier way is with a For loop and @Replace(m,x,y)

@REPLACE(m, x, y)
Type: Text/String
Parameters: m as string, x (replaced) as string, y (replacement) as string
Returns: string

Basically, you want to create a function along the lines:

Function OnlyUpper(MyString) as String
    For x = 0 to 64
         MyString = @Replace(MyString, @Chr(x), "")
    Next

    For x = 91 to 255 // If you're sure there will never be codes above 127 set to 127
         MyString = @Replace(MyString, @Chr(x), "")
    Next
    Return(MyString)
End Function


An even faster way should be @RegexReplaceString(str, regular_expression, replacement , case_insensitive)
Set regular_expression to match any control, then any punctuation, then any digit, then any lower. I'm not familiar with regular expression syntax. You may be able to say "match any of these types" in a single expression.