For over a decade, by means of a collaboration managed by MIT.nano, MIT and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec), one of many largest universities in Latin America, have labored collectively to develop revolutionary educational and analysis initiatives with a selected focus in nanoscience and nanotechnology and, extra not too long ago, an emphasis on design and sensible manufacturing. Now, the collaboration has additionally expanded to incorporate undergraduate training. Seven Tec undergrads are growing strategies to fabricate low-cost, desktop fiber-extrusion gadgets, or FrEDs, alongside friends at MIT in an “in-the-lab” educating and studying manufacturing unit, the FrED Manufacturing facility.
“The FrED Manufacturing facility serves as a factory-like training platform for manufacturing scale-up, enabling college students and researchers to have interaction firsthand within the transition from prototype improvement to small-scale manufacturing,” says Brian Anthony, MIT.nano affiliate director and principal analysis scientist within the MIT Division of Mechanical Engineering (MechE).
By way of on-campus studying, members observe, analyze, and actively contribute to this course of, gaining important insights into the complexities of scaling manufacturing operations. The product of the FrED Manufacturing facility are FrED kits — tabletop manufacturing kits that themselves produce fiber and which might be used to show sensible manufacturing ideas. “We’re thrilled to have college students from Monterrey Tec right here at MIT, bringing new concepts and views, and serving to to develop these new methods to show manufacturing at each MIT and Tec,” says Anthony.
The FrED manufacturing unit was initially constructed by a bunch of MIT graduate college students in 2022 as their thesis challenge within the Grasp of Engineering in Superior Manufacturing and Design program. They tailored and scaled the unique design of the gadget, constructed by Anthony’s scholar David Kim, into one thing that may very well be manufactured into a number of items at a considerably decrease value. The ensuing computer-aided design information had been shared with Tec de Monterrey to be used by school and college students. Since launching the FrED curriculum at Tec in 2022, MIT has co-hosted two programs led by Tec school: “Mechatronics Design: (Re) Design of FrED,” and “Automation of Manufacturing Methods: FrED Manufacturing facility Problem.”
New this educational yr, undergraduate Tec college students are collaborating in FrED Manufacturing facility analysis immersions. The scholars interact in collaborative FrED tasks at MIT after which return to Tec to implement their information — notably to assist replicate and implement what they’ve realized, with the launch of a brand new FrED Manufacturing facility at Tec de Monterrey this spring. The tip aim is to completely combine this challenge into Tec’s mechatronics engineering curriculum, through which college students study automation and robotics firsthand by means of the gadgets.
Russel Bradley, a PhD scholar in MechE supervised by Anthony, is the challenge lead of FrED Manufacturing facility and has been working carefully with the undergraduate Tec college students.
“The method of designing and manufacturing FrEDs is an academic expertise in itself,” says Bradley. “Not like an actual manufacturing unit, which seemingly wouldn’t welcome college students to experiment with the machines, the FrED manufacturing unit gives an surroundings the place you’ll be able to fail and study.”
The Tec undergrads are divided into teams engaged on particular tasks, together with Growth of an Schooling 4.0 Framework for FrED, Immersive Know-how (AR) for Manufacturing Operations, Gamifying Superior Manufacturing Schooling in FrED Manufacturing facility, and Immersive Cognitive Manufacturing facility Twins.
Sergio Siller Lobo is a Tec scholar who’s engaged on the event of the training framework for FrED. He and different college students are revising the code to make the interface extra student-friendly and greatest allow the scholars to study whereas working with the gadgets. They’re centered notably on serving to college students to have interaction with the subjects of management techniques, pc imaginative and prescient, and web of issues (IoT) in each a digital course that they’re growing, and in instantly working with the gadgets. The digital course could be offered by an teacher or accomplished autonomously by college students.
“College students could be studying the speculation with the digital programs, in addition to getting access to hands-on, sensible expertise with the gadget,” says Siller Lobo. “You’ll be able to have the very best of each methods of studying, each the sensible and the theoretical.”
Arik Gómez Horita, an undergrad from Tec who has additionally been engaged on the training framework, says that the expertise that at the moment exists when it comes to easy methods to educate college students about management techniques, pc imaginative and prescient, and IoT is commonly very restricted in both its functionality or amount.
“A key facet of the worth of the FrEDs is that we’re integrating all these ideas and a module for training right into a single gadget,” says Gómez Horita. “Bringing FrED right into a classroom is a game-changer. Our fundamental aim is attempting to place FrED into the fingers of the trainer, to make use of it for all its educating capabilities.”
As soon as the scholars return to Tec de Monterrey with the tutorial modules they’ve developed, there will probably be workshops with the FrEDs and alternatives for Tec college students to make use of their very own creativity and iterate on the gadgets.
“The FrED is known as a lab in a field, and probably the greatest issues that FrEDs do is create information,” says Siller Lobo. “Discovering new methods to get information from FrED provides it extra worth.”
Tec college students Ángel Alarcón and André Mendoza are getting ready to have MIT college students check the FrED manufacturing unit, operating a simulation with the 2 fundamental roles of engineer and operator. The operator position assembles the FrEDs throughout the workstations that simulate a manufacturing unit. The engineer position analyzes the info created on the manufacturing unit aspect by the operator and tries to search out methods to enhance manufacturing.
“It is a very immersive option to educate manufacturing techniques,” says Alarcón. “Many college students learning manufacturing, undergraduate and even graduate, end their training by no means having even gone to an precise manufacturing unit. The FrED Manufacturing facility provides college students the dear alternative to get to know what a manufacturing unit is like and expertise an trade surroundings with out having to go off campus.”
The information gained from the workstations — together with cycle time and defects in an operation — will probably be used to show totally different subjects about manufacturing. In the end, the FrED manufacturing unit at Tec will probably be used to match the advantages and disadvantages of automation versus guide labor.
Bradley says that the Tec college students convey a robust mechatronics background that provides plenty of necessary insights to the challenge, and past the lab, it’s additionally a helpful multicultural change.
“It’s not nearly what the scholars are studying from us,” says Bradley, “however it’s actually a collaborative course of through which we’re all complementing one another.”
