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J.-A. Schönherr, J. Stampfl:
"The Additive Manufacturing Teaching Factory: Hands-on Learning Nuggets for Educating a Future Generation of European AM Specialists";
Talk: Online Educa Berlin, Berlin, Deutschland; 11-30-2020 - 12-04-2020.

In recent years Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been consistently growing becoming a viable manufacturing method for high-value added applications. AM frees the designer from most restrictions regarding design space and design freedom. Thus, many conventional design approaches, currently used in mechanical engineering, are no longer valid and new curricula in educating engineers for the emerging era of digital production is necessary.
The short lead time required for 3D-printed parts innovative teaching approaches are available which include short feedback loops from design over manufacturing to the evaluation of the final application. The opportunities offered by AM are accompanied by some challenges: The boundaries between design, material, printing process and final part are significantly less pronounced than in traditional manufacturing approaches.
AM is a technology whose character is highly digital, and therefore is the ideal educational platform for promoting digital skills in manufacturing education. Currently available educational modules are typically either based towards certain providers of AM systems (as a pre-sales activity) or in many other cases based on rather theoretical modules. Therefore the project EIT-AddManu has been created and aims at providing a broad, manufacturer independent education with a strong hands-on attitude which should help students and industrial consumers to improve their skills in fields like design, application oriented thinking, and innovative manufacturing methodologies.
EIT-AddManu is an activity of the Education community of the European Institute of technology (EIT-M). "EIT-M´s mission is to bring European manufacturing actors together in innovation ecosystems that add unique value to European products, processes, services - and inspire the creation of globally competitive and sustainable manufacturing". In detail, EIT-AddManu will provide hands-on learning nuggets for teaching Additive Manufacturing (AM) in higher academic and industrial education. The targeted course work, which will be made available on a guided learning-platform (GLP), contains tools for teaching AM in terms of design-tools, fields of application, screening suitable AM systems and selecting the right material for the job. Questions of regulatory topics together with international and industrial standards will also be addressed. This learning platform benefits from, being reviewed by the international consortium, which has several years of research and education experience in AM, and its nugget-based (modular) structure. This structure allows the user the possibility to choose an individual learning path in order to train in a specific topic. Additionally, the teaching language is English with the aim of addressing the largest number of students. Being embedded within EIT-M will substantially help to promote the European character of such an activity.
A standardized EIT-certificate will ensure the quality of the course and will confirm a successful participation. The created course available on GLP and an offline variant offered at industrial conferences will address EU industry personnel working directly in the field of AM and EU industry personnel working in areas where AM-based solutions could be
implemented. Public as well as private educational institutions from Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Spain are contributing to EIT-AddManu with innovative and relevant learning nuggets, aiming at motivating and educating the future generation of European AM specialists.