additive manufacturing, adding hightech in education

Our world is changing fast, as well are our economy and production techniques. To stay competitive and environmental friendly, companies designed new techniques that can be combined in the name of Material Additive Production Techniques. The most well-known example of such a technique is 3D printing, in all his facets. The ceiling of possibilities in these techniques is far from reached because of the novelty in this area. Every week another application of Additive Manufacturing is published. For technical and vocational schools it is hard to catch up with the tempo of this fast-growing industry. But they have to! Companies need technicians, operators, maintenance people and designers. It is up to the schools to deliver well educated students.The aim of this project was to introduce Material Additive Production techniques to our students in an interactive challenging way. Some students were already aware of the possibilities. Other students made their first steps into the “3 dimensional production world” during this project. At the end of the project all the partners, students and teachers, reached a level where they could say that they controlled 3D-printing in the way that they were able to produce complementary parts within certain tolerances.With a group of 5 secondary schools from Iceland, Norway, Germany, Belgium and Czech Republic we set up some goals as well for our organization, for our teachers as for our students. We aimed to introduce 3D-production techniques into our classic workshops. For the teachers it was important to get this new production technique well understood for future use. And we tried to challenge students to learn and produce well designed parts within a guided self-learning method.After a well elaborated decision, all partners made sure that they possessed of sustainable equipment. The group discussed about a product that was so well designed that it would prove that we control the additive manufacturing technique. It turned out to be a 3 dimensional puzzle with a map of Europe and the location and logos of all partners. The design was completed with the phrase “Together, we make Europe strong!”, which contained our thoughts on all levels: Our European view, our partnership, our product. The students made presentations and joined together in workshops during each meeting to grow towards a final presentation in Belgium. The contest that we planned to participate was cancelled at the last moment, so we had to completely organize our own presentation evening at a short notice, but we succeeded.The students were very proud about the work they achieved, about the brilliant ideas they brought forward and about their linguistic and social competences. They faced the knowledge that is required to compete in the work field. We saw them grow in their confidence during the project period and saw how they became stronger in facing unknown challenges.At the end of the project each school disposed of a technical material additive device, the knowledge to handle it and the competences to integrate the technique in future lessons. The teachers and students enlarged their competences of foreign language communication and cultivated a problem solving attitude.