#32 - Incorporating 3D Printing into Introductory Engineering Courses

Abstract

Integration of hands-on activities, and design projects into course curriculum have been shown to significantly enhance and deepen understanding of concepts in the course. Three-dimensional (3D) printing has been a subject of many academic and industrial research projects. This abstract presents our efforts to integrate 3D printing technology into our pre-engineering and physics courses at University of North Georgia (UNG) Gainesville campus. The Physics Department in collaboration with the Art Department in the UNG Gainesville Campus opened a Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL) located in Dunlap Mathis Building. The goals of the lab are to assist faculty to develop the curriculum and to help students develop a deeper understanding of science and engineering techniques when creating a digital 3D object. A formal introduction to the DFL’s 3D printers is presented as a part of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) topics in the pre-engineering courses. As part of a semester group project, student project teams created CAD models of their design using Autodesk’s CAD software and 3D printed them with the assistance of the TAs. Most of the students who took part in this design projects had no or limited experience with both CAD modeling as well as 3D printing technology. But despite having limited prior experience, all student indicated a relatively high interest in learning more about 3D printing technology.

Currently Physics, Pre-engineering, and Art students have been direct beneficiaries of the Digital Fabrication Lab. 3D printing technology helped students to successfully correlate and implement various science and engineering concepts that they learnt in class through hands-on activities. In the future, research will go into finding out ways 3D printing can be introduced to higher level science and engineering classes, by showcasing 3D printed objects and different filaments’ properties, such as tolerances, tensile strength, elastic strength etc.