Title: Manufacturing And Design Education Through National Competitions
Abstract: Abstract NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Session 2463 Manufacturing and Design Education Through National Competitions Daniel F. Dolan, Michael Batchelder, Wayne B. Krause, Casey Allen, Chenoa Jensen South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Rapid City, SD 57701 (1) Abstract Entering national engineering competitions provides an opportunity for students and faculty to take part in well-planned educational activities. Competitions such as the ASCE Concrete Canoe, ASME Human Powered Vehicle, IEEE Robotics, SAE Aero, SAE Mini Baja, and SAE Formula SAE are well established regional and national engineering competitions designed to encourage good project-based engineering education and designed to demonstrate that engineering can be fun along with being challenging. They are designed to allow students to learn elements of design, organization, planning, teamwork, manufacturing, and competition. At the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, multidisciplinary teams are established for all of these competitions as well as for solar car competitions and formally supported through the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Production (CAMP). Team leaders are typically chosen from students who are members of CAMP. The teams are comprised of students at all class levels from freshmen through grad students. Modern design methodology is used on all projects. Full engineering models are developed for all competition vehicles, and commercial industrial software packages are used for analysis and manufacturing. Solidworks is typically used to develop the models. Algor is used for finite element analysis of solids, and Fluent is used for fluid analysis. Mastercam is used to develop the CNC machine code. Working Model 3D is used for dynamic analysis. Students work with professors and a manufacturing engineer to manufacture the weldments and machined pieces or they work with students from Western Dakota Technical Institute to do the actual manufacturing. This interaction between the engineering students and the technical students is a key to the success of this program. The program is assessed by three methods. The FE exam is used to assess fundamentals, results in competitions are used to assess teaming and project knowledge, and job placement is used to assess how we are seen by our hiring constituencies. Placement of the students involved in projects is excellent. Results in the competitions are good. Most students pass the FE exam, but results will be closely monitored to assure quality in preparation of the fundamentals. Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education