Curriculum Development for Rapid Prototyping in Engineering Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Curriculum Development for Rapid Prototyping in Engineering Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation

Project Summary

In traditional sense, prototyping was an undesirable method as a cost element. This led to unprecedented high costs due to irreversible errors in the later stages of the design and manufacturing process. These design mistakes can even come up to the size of the product recall. Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies offer significant opportunities for designing and manufacturing stages to detect and eliminate such errors. When integrated into the RP design and manufacturing processes, the probability of design change after product manufacturing is reduced. It is possible to see the prototype of the product before final production and to identify possible defects. It is a fact that with the development of RP technology, product controls during the design phase have become more efficient and this has led to lower product costs. This means productivity in production.

In this project, the following objectives, which were planned at the application stage, were achieved;

-An RP curriculum has been developed to be used (even now) in engineering education.
-A strong consortium has been formed that closely follows the developments in the field of engineering and technology.
-Despite Covid, the mobility of students and lecturers has been increased.

In addition to the above objectives, the project accelerated the delivery of technological innovations to the sectors. Projects have been developed in the fields of AR and VR, which are closely related to RP. These projects, in which most of the consortium partners are involved, include inclusive practices covering different sectors with the theme of innovation. In engineering faculties that have discrete RP courses in their education programs, a common curriculum is not available to use for lecturers in the courses. However, both national and international scale RP training should be carried out in the context of a standard curriculum. The international learning environment created by the project gave the opportunity to compare the applications in the field of RP in engineering faculties. In particular, the 4 LTTAs involved in the project contributed significantly to the maturation of this process. With this project, common training program were developed among the institutions that provide rapid prototyping (3D printing) training and to create a standardized training process among the countries. Thus, the learning motivation of the engineer candidates were increased in the countries using the rapid prototyping applications in the engineering processes through the intercultural learning approach.

Under this proposal, virtual summer/winter schools, virtual conference, training seminars (virtual and physical) were organized to achieve project targets. The duration of project was 36 months and Turkish partners were Gazi University (Leader-www.gazi.edu.tr), Parantez Teknoloji (https://parantezteknoloji.com.tr) and Association of Academicians Union(www.akademisyenler.org). European partners were Danmar Computers Sp Z o.o.(Poland), Universitatea Politehnica din Bucuresti(Romania), Macdac Engineering Consultancy Bureau Ltd(Malta), GoDESK S.R.L.(Italy) Evropska rozvojova agentura, s.r.o. (Czech Republic), and SC Ludor Engineering SRL(Romania).

Project Website

https://cdrpproject.org

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 370093,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

GAZI UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Parantez Teknoloji Bilisim Egt. Rek. Elektrik Elektronik Danismanlik San. Tic. Ltd. Sti.
• Association of Academicians Union
• GODESK S.R.L.
• MACDAC ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY BUREAU LTD – MECB
• UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA DIN BUCURESTI
• DANMAR COMPUTERS SP ZOO
• Evropska rozvojova agentura, s.r.o.