Teaching the manufacturing design cycle in a project course

One of problems associated with project courses is the short time available to complete the course. This typically limits the project to a segment of the total manufacturing design cycle. For a manufacturing project such as that to produce a plastic part, this translates to doing the product design or the tooling design, but not both. This paper describes an innovative approach to the problem using the injection molding process as an example of a manufacturing process. Students use commercial solid modeling software to do the product design of a fairly simple part, for example a golf divot tool. The product design is then used to develop tooling (molds), to simulate structural performance and molding characteristics, and generate the NC code to machine the tooling. Once the tooling is finished it is placed on a lab injection molder and the process is tested and optimized. The entire lab experience is completed in approximately 30 hours of laboratory time, The equipment and software used to complete the project are typical of that available in undergraduate engineering facilities.