Easy Sculpting: A Pilot Study in Teaching CNC Machining to Students From Disparate Backgrounds Without Learning G-Code

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