Resumen de Easy sculpting: A pilot study in teaching CNC machining to students from disparate backgrounds without learning G-CODE

Mahmoud Dinar, Roby Lynn, Evan Barnett, Andrés García, Gregory Kurfess, Thomas Tucker, Thomas R. Kurfess

• There is a growing interest in educating advanced manufacturing to a larger population, especially graduates of STEMfields, without a need for an advanced engineering background. Application of CAD/CAM software in teaching designand manufacturing skills is common, though it often relies on users’ knowledge of machine language, e.g., knowing how towrite G-code to work with CNC machines, in addition to fundamentals of process planning. A CAM software calledSculptPrint was used to familiarize three high-school level students without any background in manufacturing with CNCmachines. With simulations of automatically generated machining paths, the students were taught basic manufacturingconcepts in process planning and fixturing in a semester-long timeframe. The students fabricated three axisymmetric partswhen the software-generated G-code was exported to a CNC lathe. The participants created a set of tutorials and surveysthat would be used to teach sophomores in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech concepts of CNC machining andprocess planning and evaluate their understanding of choosing manufacturing processes, and process planning inmachining specifically. Examples of questions are provided to demonstrate the pertinent machining concepts that theparticipants learned. The ultimate goal of this research is to help target learners to have a better understanding of choosingbetween additive and subtractive manufacturing for parts with specific geometries in addition to other prototypingconstraints such as cost and time.