Directory of Personal Fabrication Courses at U.S. Universities

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Source: Factory@Home, http://web.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/FactoryAtHome.pdf

"In the U.S., pioneering STEM educators in high schools, technical colleges and universities have integrated personal fabrication technologies into their science and engineering curriculums." (http://web.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/FactoryAtHome.pdf)


Leading examples include:

Stanford University

professor Paulo Blikstein teaches a hands-on course to prepare education students to integrate personal fabrication technologies into their future classrooms. Students use prototyping machines (such as laser cutters and 3D printers) to design and create toys, games and other learning tools (“artifacts”) for children. Stanford students graduate from Blikstein’s class knowing how to use computers and personal fabrication technologies to design and create classroom learning kits and educational tools.


MIT's How to make (almost) anything

Students in a course called “How to make (almost) anything” apply personal fabrication technologies to solve real world problems. Taught by a leader in the field of personal fabrication, Neal Gershenfeld, students in the class range from engineers to artists to art historians. Over the course of a semester, students learn to use CAD software, work with a circuit board, and use a number of personal fabrication machines. The final semester project is each students’ designed and fabricated solution to a real world problem.


Cornell University

At Cornell, the Fab@Home project is both the name of a 3D printer model, as well as an ongoing initiative aimed at STEM educators. Developed by Professor Hod Lipson and postdoctoral student Evan Malone, the Fab@home 3D printer offers open-sourced design blueprints for the printer, so anybody who is interested can download the design files, make their own Fab@Home, or improve upon its existing design. Fab@home works with a number of kid-friendly materials, including Play-Doh, cookie dough, and chocolate, as well as polymers and metals.

Technical development and support for Fab@home is provided by students and open source volunteers. A second major STEM initiative under the Fab@home umbrella is 3dprintables.org, a web site exchange of no-cost 3D electronic blueprints for educational tools and classroom models intended for use in K-12 STEM education. K- 12 students upload electronic blueprints onto the site for objects such as printable models of the molecular structure of a particular element, or the physical manifestation of a mathematical equation. Other students browse and download the collection of designs and print their selected object on their local Fab@home 3D printer. A growing collection of online electronic blueprints for a wide range of 3D printable items are available at 3Dprintables.org.


Lorain County Community College (LCCC)

LCCC is a leading personal manufacturing educator. Their Fab Lab is open to students and the general public. Students can take a one-credit course on Introduction to Personal Fabrication or can enroll in a non-credit workshop. The Fab Lab has personal-scale vinyl cutter, table-top milling machine and a laser cutter that can engrave text, graphics, and photographs onto a wide variety of materials (wood, acrylic, marble, mat board, leather, glass, and more)." (http://web.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/FactoryAtHome.pdf)


University of Washington

The University of Washington’s Open3DP (Open 3D Printing) project is a website hosted by the Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Its purpose is to disseminate information and foster a community of people interested in an open sharing of 3D printing information. The Solheim Lab is directed by Mark Ganter and Duane Storti.


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