Role of Rapid Prototyping in Improving the Quality and Impact of Academic (Students') Projects

Rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing is being used in industry design houses since late 1980s. However, in the last fifteen years, this technology has briskly entered the academic ecosystem and significantly impacted engineering education in different parts of the world. Several studies have already been published to showcase the impact of rapid prototyping on engineering curriculum. The purpose of this work is to explicitly study the role of rapid prototyping in improving the quality and impact of academic projects that students undertake to solve different real-life problems. Ten students' projects have been identified for this study and it has been systematically demonstrated how rapid prototyping has contributed in making better prototypes that resulted in success of these projects on multiple platforms. Additionally, the paper also highlights different optimization techniques that are being adopted, improvised, and developed in our rapid prototyping facility to achieve the desired results.