Making Better Engineers with CAM

Since 2003, the engineering program at Robert Morris University (RMU; Pittsburgh) has placed all of its graduates directly into engineering roles with manufacturing companies or into advanced degree programs in top-quality institutions.

Manufacturers have included companies such as US Steel, Curtiss-Wright, Raytheon, Honeywell, Fed-Ex, and Schoeder Industries. Engineering programs have included Case Western Reserve University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Penn State University.

One of the secrets of this success is RMU's philosophy of tightly integrating the theoretical and computational aspects of engineering education with practical real-world applications. RMU offers ABET-accredited programs in mechanical, software, and industrial engineering, as well as manufacturing engineering. In fact, RMU is home to Pennsylvania's and the mid-Atlantic region's only ABETaccredited Manufacturing Engineering degree. ABET accredits some 2700 engineering and technology programs at more than 550 colleges and universities nationwide.

Engineering at Robert Morris is characterized by small class sizes, personalized attention, dedicated faculty, and excellent laboratory facilities in the Learning Factory that are used in every undergraduate engineering course. Students head to the Learning Factory where they use industrial-grade software and equipment to conduct research or solve problems that reflect their classroom work.

During their senior year, students become involved in a capstone design experience called "Integrated Engineering Design." Many will manufacture their designs in the Learning Factory using a Haas Automation HMC or VMC. Students generate all of the toolpaths for these systems using Mastercam X software from CNC Software Inc. (Tolland, CT), which they master long before their senior year.

Senior faculty members at the RMU School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science shared their views of how CAM software is being used as a bridge to integrate the theoretical with practical aspects of design engineering and manufacturing.

"Students use the Mastercam X program selectively for a variety of class projects that call for something to be machined. It's the principal way that CNC code is generated at this university," explains Winston Erevelles, Dean of RMU's School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science. "It has been our CAM software of choice since the inception of our program in 1999."

"What I like about this CAM program is that it offers versatile surface modeling capabilities, and I do ask students to use these capabilities very early in their RMU education," says Arif Sirinterlikci, director of the engineering laboratories. "I used it to walk through a set of exercises dealing with different surface types. I think this is very important because engineering students tend to lack surface modeling experience, so I have embedded a good number of examples in the course they can actually use."

Mastercam X is often used to generate files for rapid prototyping of parts that are made either by conventional machining or stereolithography. "Mastercam X has many uses, whether it is modeling, generating code, visualization, or generating robust STL files. You also have a post processor that is very open to customization. This allows people like us, who run an integrated learning factory with an automated machining and assembly cell, to customize the post processor to interface with our robots and PLCs."

"It's an easy software package to learn, to get up and running on, and frankly I've seen middle school and high school kids [through RMU's outreach programs] machine parts within a very short time. For one of these students to knock out a part within two or three hours is pretty remarkable," says Erevelles.

"We provide students with code generated in Mastercam X and we ask them to concentrate on interpreting, rather than writing the code. Up to that point they have written G and M code, but haven't read any code written by somebody else," says Sirinterlikci. "Assignments like this help improve the students' ability to work with the CAM software at a deeper level."

"Philosophically, RMU is about problem-solving. Software is not a substitute for thinking but a valuable tool to augment thinking, to expand thinking. Without the tool, we can work on a simple problem only. With the tool, we can work on a more challenging problem or on different facets of the same problem," says Joe Iannelli, Engineering Department head.

"When we manually wrote G and M codes we had the geometry and the toolpath which we had to model. But this didn't allow us to try multiple what-if scenarios," Sirinterlikci says. "Mastercam X is more than a tool that takes away the drudgery of generating multiple toolpaths. It has an open architecture, so we don't have to follow a set procedure. In this sense, it's more like a scratch pad. It allows us to experiment, but the sequence can be worked out later."

Sirinterlikci explains: "This program allows us to explore questions like: In how many different ways can this machine work? What tool combinations can I use? Can I change my speeds and feeds on the fly to make a better product or a lower-cost product? Can we apply more intelligence to the process? A student can evaluate a variety of alternate competing scenarios, and then pick the one that optimally solves the problem that she or he is investigating."

He is careful to explain that the software is not a crutch: "We are not teaching software. We are teaching the intelligent use of software. It allows students to become more powerful, turning their ideas into reality. Mastercam X allows students to become better engineers."