Bridging the gap between student instruction and advanced research: Educational software tool for manufacturing learning

摘要

Currently, there is a big gap between industry and the instructions provided by engineers at the University. Manufacturing companies need engineers with specific profiles and skills in machining. Teachers, who face both worlds, must play an active role in shortening the transition times of students. Recently, barrel-end mills have been the focus of attention of toolmakers and manufacturers due to their excellent production times and surface accuracies. They are outstanding competitors to more traditional ball-end mills in some applications. This study raises the challenge of translating the developed work for this kind of tool from the research domain into the classroom at the University. For this, a software tool proBARR (c) was developed and used for learning of the subject of manufacturing. This educational software is capable of predicting cutting forces and surface topography in milling with barrel-end mills and was successfully introduced as part of the students' learning process. A software tool was created for the analysis and prediction of cutting forces and surface quality in milling processes with barrel-end mills. This specific problem was addressed from past experience in research projects but was then adapted for academic use. The teachers believe that, if suitably presented to students, the tool provides an excellent opportunity to approach real problems in industry, thus boosting instructions for future engineers. In this way, a pragmatic methodology to computational thinking is presented that transforms traditional difficulties associated with process modeling into more comprehensive tasks, more oriented toward solving specific problems.