There is a substantial project component in the graduate version of the Digital Manufacturing course, as follows:

Project Topics

     The topics that you may choose from for the course project are as follows. You may suggest modifications of a topic or suggest your own topic, with good justification, for my approval.

     The first set of topics are planned sections for the chapter of the textbook on Fabber Science. To get an idea of the kind of information you should be collecting on these topics, see the existing sections from the first edition, Photopolymers and Sintering of Thermoplastic Powders.

• Carving. The scientific concepts underlying the processes of material removal. Major sections would include:

  •	History of Carving Technology, including ancient wood and stone carving, and carving done by animals, such as gophers (burrowing) and woodpeckers.
  •	The Physics of Carving. What are the mechanics of the interaction between a knife blade or other cutting tool and the material being cut, including differences that depend on the choice of material being cut, the material, shape, and other characteristics of the cutting tool, the angle and speed of the cut, etc.

  Chosen by Gaurav Chaphalkar.

• Molding. The scientific concepts underlying the shaping of materials by molding. Major sections would include:

  •	History of Molding, which goes all the way back to ancient peoples digging a hole in the ground into which they poured molten metals.
  •	The Physics and Chemistry of Hardening in Shape. How is the molding process affected by the shape, material, and other characteristics of the cavity, by the material and other characteristics of the mold material, by external factors, such as vibration, etc.?

  Chosen by David Cheng.

• Adhesion. The scientific concepts underlying adhesion. Major sections would include:

  •	History of Adhesives.
  •	The Physics and Chemistry of Adhesion. What is it that makes certain materials stick to each other? What are the charactristics of the materials and other factors that affect the process?

  Chosen by Rahul Natrajan.

• Biological Adhesion. In the table of contents, this is part of the above section, but it is a large and complex enough topic to stand on its own. We’re talking here about the biological materials and processes that bond together cells into tissues and tissues into organs and organisms. Chosen by Aaron Kim.

• Coatings. The scientific concepts underlying the application of coatings to surfaces. Major sections would include:

  •	History of Coatings.
  •	The Physics and Chemistry of Coatings.
  •	Coatings on Coatings. What changes, if anything, in the dynamics of coatings, when the coating is being applied to a previous layer of coating? At the simplest level, this is the case of applying a second coat of paint, but it is also at the core of every process of digital fabrication on the market today.

  Chosen by Cheng-Te (Chard) Lee.

• Drop Deposition. The scientific concepts underlying the deposition and build-up of material droplets. Major sections would include:

  •	History of Drop Deposition.
  •	The Mechanics of Drop Evolution.
  •	The Physics of Drop Interaction.

  Chosen by Wei-Yu (Harry) Liao.

     The remaining topics are from other parts of the book that need development.

• Improvements in Subtractive Fabrication. Developments in the past decade or so that have been improving the productivity and quality of material removal processes, such as high-speed machining. Material removal by water jet, laser, and particle beams. Micromachining. Chosen by Tapan Panwar.

• Artificial Embryology. Embryology is the process by which a single living cell grows into an organism. We want to review this process from the perspective of applications of biological concepts to technology. Included in this subject is the issue of how 3-D shape is represented in DNA and what that might tell us about future possibilities for 3-D CAD for molecular structures. This challenging and fascinating topic will be appropriate for a talented and highly motivated student. It is feasible that a good project on this subject could form the basis of a journal article for publication.

• Self-Assembly. How is it that some physical systems transform themselves into a highly-ordered and stable state? What are the primary examples of this phenomenon, both natural and artificial? Also, a major section of this topic would consider the related issue of self-organization. Chosen by Hamid Chavok.

• Materials Technology. A look at exciting developments at the cutting edge of materials, including functionally gradient materials, structured materials, smart materials, fabbing of living tissues, and the possibility of matter recycling (or material reconsumption) for fabbing. Smart materials will be treated by our TA, Mahdi Yoozbashizadeh.

• Natural Habitat Construction. A review of the fascinating world of natural engineering, including tunnel burrowing, ant hills, termite mounds, honeycombs, spider webs, bird nests, and beavers dams. Chosen by Behdinan Khashayar.

• 3-D Shape Representation. A study of the mathematics underlying the digital representation of 3-D shapes. Also including a review of data formats used for such. Chosen by Stavros Karamolegkos.

Report Websites

If Your Work is Really Good

     As you have seen, the topics listed don’t appear by coincidence. They are topics that need development for the next edition of the textbook. Because of this, your work has the potential to be useful to me. If you compile a significant volume of factual information that I incorporate into the book, you will be credited in the book as a source for this information. If, in addition to being well-researched, your project is written well enough that I feel it could be incorporated into the book with only minor editing, then I may want to discuss obtaining your permission to use your material. In that case, you would be credited as a contributor to the book and you may be elligible for a portion of royalties.

     It is important to me that you do not feel I am trying to take advantage of you as a student in the performance of your project. So let me make the following commitments to you regarding use of your material. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about this.

     Copyright. You own the copyright on work you produce as a course project in school. If I want to use more than a brief quote of your writing verbatim or reporduce graphics that you created, then I will request a copyright transfer that will allow me to use this material and will not allow you to publish it again in the same form. Any such request for a copyright transfer will take place after the course is over and graded, possibly several years later, and you will be under no obligation to agree to it.

     Acknowledgement. If I use a significant amount of information compiled in your project, you will be cited as a source. If I use something you wrote essentially verbatim, you will be cited as the author of that material. If I use an illustration that you drew or a photograph that you took, you will be cited as the source of the graphic.

     Compensation. If I use (under the transfer of copyright described above) 1,000 words or more of your writing and/or five or more of your graphics, then you will be listed as a contributor to the book and you will earn a share in royalties or profits at the rate of 30% of the proportion that your content bears to the whole book.