Equipment: Acquisition of Metal Additive Manufacturing System for Improving Undergraduate Engineering Education

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Educational Instrumentation project at the University of Houston-Clear Lake will strengthen undergraduate learning in Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Aerospace Engineering. Specifically, this project will secure a metal additive manufacturing (AM) machine, which will allow students to: (i) be engaged in hands-on learning by incorporating metal AM technology into core engineering courses, such as Materials Science, Manufacturing Processes, Engineering Physics Design Project, Composite Materials, Additive Manufacturing, and Senior Design/Capstone Projects, and (ii) to compete in state and national level design and manufacturing challenges. An estimated 180 students and six (6) faculty will utilize the project-funded equipment each year. In addition to providing improved experiences in different engineering courses, the new equipment will also be used to conduct undergraduate research on AM alloy development and extreme environment materials. This equipment will also facilitate manufacturing, prototyping, and characterization for senior design/capstone projects. The goals of this project are to enrich the learning and experiences of undergraduate students by providing critical hands-on metal AM experiential learning experience in Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Aerospace Engineering courses. The project will contribute to the academic and manufacturing communities by producing educational and research content in metal 3D printing including design for manufacturing, principles of metal AM, process development strategies for AM, process-structure-property relationship in metal AM, and applications. The findings will be disseminated through open-source lecture content, conferences, and publications, thereby advancing the state of knowledge in engineering education and AM that are critical for US manufacturing competitiveness in the global economy. The project will assess the impact of the project-funded equipment using the milestones of (i) timely receipt and installation, (ii) number of faculty and student training, (iii) number of the developed hands-on projects using this 3D printer, (iv) support of senior design projects and student design challenges (v) tracking matrices such as usage logs to maintain detailed logs of system usage, including hours of operation, types of projects, and number of users. This project is funded by the HSI Program, which aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and increase capacity to engage in the development and implementation of innovations to improve STEM teaching and learning at HSIs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.