Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education (2023) / Chapter Skim
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1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing
1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing
Pages 7-25
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From page 7... ...
And it describes what an ideal future might look like, with engineering graduates having the skills and mindset necessary to take full advantage of advanced manufacturing technologies.
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From page 8... ...
But sometimes change comes more rapidly, with major improvements and fundamentally new capabilities appearing in a short period of time, offering tremendous potential but also tremendous challenges. Those who study technology and manufacturing speak of four industrial revolutions that have taken place over the past three centuries.1 The first, in the 1800s, was driven by the mechanization of production using water and steam power; the resulting dramatic increase in productivity and sharp decrease in the cost of manufactured objects led to a shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.
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From page 9... ...
First, it consists of newly developed approaches that are improvements over traditional methods and are not yet widely adopted. Most advanced manufacturing technologies today are highly digitized, producing products designed using digital tools, often simulated and/or tested digitally, and manufactured with computer-controlled equipment that follows the digital design and incorporates digital feedback.
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From page 10... ...
For example, manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, automobiles, aircraft, and integrated circuits use different technologies. Given that this report focuses on advanced manufacturing in the defense industrial base, it is useful to get a sense of some of the specific FIGURE 1-1 3D-printed rocket motor by Rocket Lab, produced in Long Beach, California.
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From page 11... ...
products, digital threads involve models that are created in the design process and then used in manufacturing as the digital targets for automation and metrology applications and also for sustainment functions during the product's period of use. The digital thread enables a variety of advanced manufacturing technologies, including robots and automation, additive manufacturing, advanced metrology, augmented reality, robotic application of coatings, equipment specialized for a product (e.g., drilling airframe components for fasteners)
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From page 12... ...
SOURCE: D.A. Kinard, 2019, "F-35 Digital Thread and Advanced Manufacturing," pp.
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manufacturer of metal 3D printing systems and industrial welding systems; this process may make it possible to deposit pounds of mate rial per hour, which in turn could lower costs. Recent work shows that additive manufacturing of titanium using laser powder bed fusion and simple post-heat treatment produces results stronger than conventional methods.b a R
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From page 14... ...
Other advanced manufacturing technologies used by aerospace companies include automated fiber placement for composites, advanced machining to tightly control part and assembly tolerances and reduce assembly costs, automated material kitting and delivery to the production floor, and modeling and simulation technologies to lay out the factories of the future, simulate product build to reduce issues during actual assembly operations, and accurately develop cost, span, staffing, and manufacturing plans. The bottom line is that advanced manufacturing technologies hold tremendous potential for revolutionizing industries in the U.S.
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undergraduate engineering education in terms of what is required for advanced manufacturing, particularly in the defense industrial base. CHALLENGES TO FULFILLING THE POTENTIAL OF ADVANCED MANUFACTURING As Schwab observed in his 2015 article, the complex, rapidly evolving, and customizable nature of the technologies that the fourth industrial revolution is bringing creates great demands on the skills and adaptability of those developing and operating the technologies.
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From page 16... ...
. Many factors have contributed to this general failure to teach undergraduate engineering students about manufacturing, but one underlying factor is particularly important in the context of this report: Mechanical engineering curricula appear to assume slowly changing manufacturing technologies that allow design and realization to be effectively separated: a design engineer's education can focus on the principles and techniques involved in creating effective designs, while on-the-job learning from colleagues will provide local manufacturing know-how.
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The application of these new techniques will allow for the introduction of new efficiencies in production and manufacture of new designs that are not practical or possible with existing technologies. But taking advantage of this potential requires the development of engineers who are skilled in creating designs tailored to advanced manufacturing techniques as well as traditional manufacturing methods, and the current failure to consistently address advanced manufacturing in undergraduate engineering education is limiting the nation's ability to harness advanced manufacturing to grow the U.S.
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A request for information by the study committee shows that only 28 percent of the respondents from academia commented positively that the ABET assessment criteria include advanced manufacturing knowledge or skills as objectives or outcomes.14 While most in academia consider advanced manufacturing to be an important topic, they also express the concern that the engineering curricula are already packed solid, leaving little room for adding new content such as advanced manufacturing. Instead, most schools offer a single manufacturing course as part of their required courses, with advanced manufacturing topics typically offered as electives in a structured way to serve as a link between the BS degree and corresponding 3+2 and 4+1 MS programs.
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From page 19... ...
But such exploration and innovation require a fundamentally different mindset from engineers than working with well-established manufacturing technologies whose capabilities and limitations are well understood; instead of focusing simply on design, engineers exploring the potential of advanced manufacturing need to see their jobs as spanning both design and realization. Advanced manufacturing engineers will also need an understanding of the principles underlying advanced manufacturing technologies and the advanced materials that they use and produce.
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From page 20... ...
.17 While manufacturing workforce concern is usually focused on skilled technicians, the challenge of developing, adopting, and optimizing new technologies such as advanced manufacturing also requires engineers with new skills to capture the innovations' benefits. For this reason, the study committee was charged with recommending ways that undergraduate engineering education could better serve the DIB, its supply chain vendors, and U.S.
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From page 21... ...
being asked of the workshop attendees, she said: Have engineering programs kept pace with the growing importance of manufacturing processes, and, if not, what should those programs look like? "The gap between an idea for a product and the successful production of that product -- that is, the manufacturing step -- is often referred to as the ‘valley of death,'" she said, because good ideas often fail to be transformed into viable products.
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From page 22... ...
Lockheed Martin developed and applied a plethora of advanced manufacturing technologies for the F-35 production line, including advanced robotics, noncontact metrology, optical projection, augmented reality, and additive manufacturing.19 Much of the strength in the DIB is due to the classified nature of DIB products, the DoD requirements for "Made in America" content, lobbying by states for defense dollars, and generous funding levels for the defense industry for research and development as well as the production of defense articles. However, this engineering development focus is somewhat diluted by the drive for manufacturing cost savings to retain profitability and affordability, which is in turn driven by Congress and the taxpayers.
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From page 23... ...
These organizations serve to develop new technologies and train new engineers for advanced manufacturing careers. But advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics, automation, additive manufacturing, metrology, and advanced machining equipment, in addition to sophisticated integrated circuits and many other electronic components, are typically sourced from foreign suppliers.
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From page 24... ...
Again, this may not be a problem for larger manufacturing companies, which have the resources to train their engineers about new capabilities, but it can make it impossible for small and medium-sized companies to take advantage of the potential of advanced manufacturing. Thus, in the ideal future, engineering graduates will enter the workforce having at least a basic familiarity with the most important advanced manufacturing technologies and know how to keep up to date with new developments.
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From page 25... ...
, knowledge of modern software tools, familiarity with advanced manufacturing technologies, and willingness to try new things -- and sometimes fail -- in order to advance the state of the art. Having a sufficient supply of engineers with these capabilities in the future will go far in ensuring that the country can realize the potential of advanced manufacturing both in the defense industrial base and in the manufacturing sector in general.
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