Engineering Education, Beyond The Books

This paper will focus on the process and benefits students receive through practical manufacturing experience. Included in the paper are two examples of small projects that can be completed in 1-2 hours, yet still provide a valuable introduction to the machining process. The Purdue hammer project, which is produced in a sophomore introduction to mechanical design course, is a brass hammer with a wood handle. Using hexagonal brass stock, the students learn drilling and milling, while they create the hole for the handle. The lathe is used to chamfer and to turn the work piece down to length. Other machines used are the grinder, polishing wheel, press, and a CNC mill. A more simplified project is the Purdue cardholder project. After milling a piece of aluminum bar stock into the shape of a cardholder, students learn different finishing techniques, pressing, and CNC milling. Once students completed the projects described in this paper, information was gathered in the form of a survey. The students’ opinions of machining the projects were then consolidated and included in this paper. The results showed that working in the machine shop “help[ed] to remove the intimidation of the shop itself.” Other results include: the students’ fear of using the machines declined, the extent at which they knew the machines increased from 2.4 to 3.7 and 1.9 to 3.8 on a 5 point Likert Scale, they enjoyed the opportunity to get their hands dirty, and they saw the experience as a valuable learning tool. However, the thing the students liked best was “the fact that [they] had something material to bring home and say ‘I made this in class’.” The two things that they liked the least were “only get[ting] one day in the shop” and “leaving the shop.”