Project-based Learning in Manufacturing Processes Course

Integration of design and manufacturing is critical in producing successful products and systems. However, there are barriers between design and manufacturing related courses in engineering education. Manufacturing courses provide students with vast amount of technical information. They can only convert this information to knowledge if they use it in real life problems or projects. Most of the manufacturing courses cannot include such experience into their curriculum. An attempt to integrate design projects into a Manufacturing Processes course has been studied in this paper. Design projects are assigned to students and are expected to define their problem by determining possible combinations of materials and processes that could fabricate the desired shapes with the required properties. Students started with an existing part and redesigned it for predefined conditions. They also designed the manufacturing process and tools required to manufacture the part. They used several educational resources, CAD tools, and information provided during the lectures to design necessary tools to manufacture the final product.