A Quick Prototyping Project for First Year Engineering Students

A short prototyping project was offered to first year engineering students as an option in an introduction to engineering course. Students would implement functional machines by adapting from existing designs using digital prototyping and commercial standard components. The minimum necessary skills and tools that students in all groups had to be trained were the Autodesk Fusion 360 and assembling of components. Otherwise, the project topics and available resources would dictate other skills or tools that had to be learnt. Using successive short bursts of activities in supporting learning environment under a closed supervision of academic and supporting staff, the prototypes could be completed and tested within 3 weeks. The lasting contribution was the can-do attitude and quick mock-up skills that were sufficient for initial development of real products.