Teaching Design for Additive Manufacturing Through Problem-Based Learning

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a technology that, while removing many of the constraints of traditional manufacturing, imposes some new constraints of its own. Because of this, engineers and designers need to be taught a new set of skills in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) in order to become competent in designing parts that maximize the benefits offered by AM. Around the world, universities and organizations are beginning to offer courses in DfAM to improve the skills of modern engineers and designers. Staff at Lund University, in Sweden, have begun to offer such DfAM courses to industry that use problem-based learning (PBL) as the pedagogical approach to teaching DfAM in a more effective way. This chapter describes how these courses have been implemented, and how they have benefitted from the PBL teaching approach.