Development of 3D-Virtual Facility Tutorial Implemented in Mobile Environment to Enhance Additive Manufacturing Education

To date, improving the manufacturing engineering education has become a major mission for universities, particularly when manufacturing industry is currently recovering in the US. There is a need to develop tutorial software implemented in mobile device to allow students to get access of instructional material in 24/7 and enhance student learning in manufacturing engineering courses that will give future workforce engineers the skills that manufacturing companies are searching for. This paper discusses software preparation and development to support undergraduate and graduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning environments through Cyber Based Rapid Manufacturing (CBRM) – preparing students for the needs of industry and promoting advanced manufacturing technologies in higher education. The software currently aims to be used in a mobile device like Microsoft Surface and Microsoft Windows phone. It is also anticipated to be implemented in Android environment eventually. Software features are similar to 3D virtual Rapid Prototyping (RP) simulator based on “U Print” and include RP device fundamentals, virtual calibration, virtual manufacturing and virtual testing. This paper also aims at supporting the development of the multidisciplinary educational activities.