Expanding a Mechanical Engineering Technology Curriculum to Include Additive Manufacturing

Abstract Additive Manufacturing (AM) has become a game changer for the manufacturing industry. With growing implementation of AM in various industries, it is the responsibility of different levels of education to expose students to AM technologies and to integrate AM into their curriculum. It is well known that students who gain the skillsets of today's industry have a better chance in getting a competitive job. In response to this need, a new senior level elective course on AM, has been developed for the first time in BlindReview region in the South. The course was developed and taught by the Mechanical Engineering Technology faculty with the expertise in manufacturing processes, welding, and material science. The course was available to a wider university population of undergraduate students, from different majors ranging from the Mechanical Engineering Technology program, Industrial Technology program, Career and Technical Education teacher program, and Mechanical Engineering program students at Mid-Sized University (blind review). This course is a part of manufacturing concentration for MET students. The course curriculum includes an overview of various AM processes. It explains how AM enables the creation of complex geometries from the bottom-up, without many of the constraints of traditional manufacturing methods such as machining, molding, and casting and commonly taught machinist approach CAD modelling methodology. Some of the topics covered in the class include fundamentals of polymer, composite, review of different AM technologies such as photopolymerization, powder bed fusion, extrusion, beam deposition, and sheet lamination. The course also included various topics related to the design and manufacturing engineering and how different AM settings are related to the final product precision and surface finish. The topics are design for AM, process selection in relation to the different materials, technologies, time needed for printing, or other manufacturing process constraints. The following important factors are discussed: process capabilities such as rate and resolution. Quality of AM parts are benchmarked against those of traditionally manufactured in the class and potential failure modes. In the hands-on labs, design and making of simple to complex parts using various AM processes are illustrated for students. They design a product that is difficult or impossible to fabricate using tradition technology, and then utilize the AM technologies available in the lab to fabricate the product. This paper also discusses the development and implementation of AM course and provide recommendations for improving the course contents (both theory and lab).