Implementation of the Manufacturing Skills in a Freshman-Level CAD/CAM Course

The projects and assignments in freshman level CAD/CAM courses provide students a valuable chance to develop their skills further. In the past, most of assignments and projects were about designing simple mechanical (and/or electrical) system and theories without requiring any manufacturing skills. However, students need to have basic manufacturing skills as they move up to the upper level classes or when they graduate. Students who have a good manufacturing skills tend to have better hands-on skills and to be more successful as students as well as engineers. In this specific example class, students are required to learn manufacturing skills through several unique manufacturing assignments. Three manufacturing assignments including Keychain CNC Milling, Manual G-coding and 3D printing assignments will be discussed. Students are asked to cut a plastic keychain with their own design using CAD/CAM software and CNC milling as a first assignment. As a second assignment, they are asked to design and cut the various shapes of slots in a piece of plastic without any CAD/CAM software (Manual G-coding). As a third assignment, students design and fabricate aluminum gusset. As a fourth assignment, Students bring their own 3D CAD model to 3D printer and fabricate their final semester project parts. Students are given maximum 4 weeks for each assignment and present their final products to an instructor. In this paper, following topics will be explained and discussed. 1) History of the class projects, 2) Manufacturing assignments, 3) Course topics and schedule, 4) Semester Projects, 5) Feedback from students and 6) Conclusion and Future development of course.