Summer or not, one corner of the Georgia Tech campus is still swarming with students. One day last week, Francisco Gonzalez, a student in biomedical engineering, was at a computer designing a part for a machine to aid in pharmaceutical research.
In another room, Siddharth Avachat was cutting metals to evaluate under high-intensity loads, hoping his work will help the U.S. Navy build better ship hulls. Across the hall, two students were nailing together the wooden frame for a machine to chill beer from 90 degrees to 38 degrees within one minute.
Tech’s “Invention Studio” is a place where bits of the future are forged — a cross between a think tank and an ultra-high-end machine shop. Here, students brainstorm and prototype technologies that may shape the most intimate aspects of our lives, or change the dynamics of an industry. Some at Tech believe there is nothing like it anywhere else, with so many advanced machines completely at the disposal of students.
The studio, which started up four years ago, is now the most heavily used floor space on campus, according to Assistant Professor Craig Forest, who founded it. It provides a place for engineering students to get out of their heads, get their hands on materials and make things. They manage it themselves, through a student organization called the Makers Club.
It’s also at the forefront of a national trend to bring engineering education back out of the theoretical and into hands-on experience.
“We learn a lot more here than we do in our classes,” said Wes Rogers, an electrical and computer engineering major who serves as a “master” for the 3-D printers and laser cutter in the studio.
A trio of students, backpacks slung, had stopped by the studio before heading out to buy supplies. Funded by the Monday Night Brewing company, they intend to invent a machine to align beer bottles much more cheaply than current machines do as they come off the production line and are positioned to be boxed up.
“We’re going to use the water jet a lot,” explained mechanical engineering student Noah Woodward, one of the three.
The machines are the inanimate stars of the show, many costing tens of thousands of dollars: a laser cutter, a lathe to cut metals, an injection molding machine, mills, and a waterjet cutter fed by a clear plastic jar full of violet sand made from garnets, among others. The divas are the 3-D printers.
When Gonzalez’ design is done, he will click “print” much as anyone would on a word processing document. But the command will go to one of the studio’s 20 3-D printers, machines that cost from $1,000 to $80,000 each.
“It’s awesome to work here,” Gonzalez said. “The equipment is very good.”
As he worked, 3-D printers hummed in different rooms of the studio. Their nozzles zipped back and forth, laying down layers of plastic, turning computerized instructions into things. The parts the printers were making that day included a blue L-shaped part, perhaps for a robot, and two yellow parts that bore a distant resemblance to angular roses. The students “making” them were long gone, having pushed print and left.
On a desk nearby lay a relics of 3-D printing past, including a bright yellow bust of Yoda.
The Invention Studio grew out of the school’s series of design courses, called Capstone, in which students take on challenges from industries to solve various problems. At the end of the process, they show their creations, compete for prizes, and maybe earn royalties.
Starting with space taken over from the mailroom, Forest said, the studio gave those students more space and machines, and exploded in popularity. Now about 500 individual students a month use it. The students manage the equipment and make the case where money should go, with oversight by professors.
Although students are responsible for operating dangerous machines at all hours, Forest is satisfied with their safety culture.
Near one of the machines they have hung a black-and-white printout bearing the image of a genial-looking young man, overtyped with his name, saying he “IS PERMANENTLY BANNED FROM THE INVENTION STUDIO FOR WORKING ALONE.” It serves as a warning to all, students said. In a room where a partner’s ability to push a red emergency button could mean the difference between emergency help and death, following such rules is critical, they added.
Engineering schools everywhere are grappling with the balance between theoretical and hands-on learning. The U.S. goes through pendulum swings: beefing up theoretical education to compete with Moscow after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik; pushing hands-on education when Japan’s manufacturing prowess threatened the U.S. auto industry.
The question is how much a school can make hands-on manufacturing an institutionalized part of the curriculum, and how much to invest in it. A growing body of opinion says, more, said Norman Fortenberry, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education.
Fortenberry hasn’t seen the Invention Studio, but after hearing a rundown of what’s available there and under student control, he said he’s not aware of anything comparable.
With about a half-million dollars’ worth of equipment and a $250,000 annual budget, the Invention Studio is not cheap. But Forest said it pays off in better career prospects for Tech’s graduates. After all, he asked: “What employer wouldn’t want an engineer that can build stuff?”
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