An Outreach Program Focusing on Design Process and 3-D-printing

3D-printing is going to be one of the most innovative technologies of the current century, with diverse applications in education, engineering, art, and design. Over two summers, we conducted a teaching class about advanced manufacturing and 3D printing, in the framework of a project funded by the DOE Office for Nuclear Security/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE-NNSA). The objective of our summer program is to serve advance manufacturing, as an evolving technology and to improve STEM education to prepare the new generation of high-school students (future engineers) through the use of the existing tools. Through the use of programs, such as CREO and Autodesk Inventor, as well as 3D printing concepts, both technology and basic traditional STEM knowledge, such as math and science were served in this program. These tools allow the students to reach their objectives without going through complex mathematics and engineering concepts and methods. This way, these projects will mostly focus on critical thinking and the development of creative solutions to problems. Without deep mathematics knowledge, students were able to conceptualize, customize and prototype their design. The visual nature of these tools (CREO and Inventor), and the 3Dprinting technology enabled high-school students to grasp the technology and concepts very quickly. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the design and implementation of an experiment, from basic parts. In particular, we will discuss the lesson learned, such as: Instead of going through the program chapter by chapter, we encouraged collaboration and integrated work through a set of projects. The students selected only five project that fit their needs and curiosity. Going through the design process, step-by-step: define the problem, background research, specify the requirements, brainstorm solutions, development work, prepare the prototype, and finally assessment and analysis. Students have the ability to create their own designs using tools to reach a creative design and concrete outcomes. Dr. A.C. Megri ASEE 2018 paper ID: 22318 3 Most importantly, project methodology will be discussed. We discuss the project design program from the students’ point of view, and the experience earned in design, integration, and also in written and oral communication skills. The methodology used to evaluate the effectiveness of this design program in term of learning outcomes is also described. In this paper, we focus only on the second year of the summer camp.