3-D Printing Makes a Mark on Engineering Education

Imagine being able to replace diseased bone with an exact metal copy, but porous so that new tissue can grow inside it. Over time, the metal slowly dissolves, leaving behind healthy bone.

There's no need to imagine it, because such implants are being developed today through "additive manufacturing" techniques such as 3-D printing. "You can get a CT scan of the patient, feed it into the printer,​ and have the part completely made to fit the patient," says Prashant Kumta, an engineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

And the possibilities stretch far beyond medicine to building any custom item, from the parts for cars and planes to clothes to braces for teeth. Little wonder that additive manufacturing is putting a new spin on graduate education in both engineering and industrial design. 

The consulting firm Wohlers Associates in Fort Collins, Colorado, expects worldwide revenues from additive manufacturing techniques to exceed $21 billion by 2020, up from just over $3 billion in 2013. In 2012, the Obama administration provided $50 million to jump-start America Makes, an institute dedicated to growing the nation's competitiveness in additive manufacturing by creating collaborations among businesses, universities, government agencies and nonprofits. The consortium has 100-plus members so far.

Historically, the limitations of manufacturing equipment have dictated what parts can be made; 3-D printing can create almost any shape.

"What can we design now that all those limitations have been relaxed?" asks Burak Ozdoganlar, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Complex Engineered Systems, one of several academic research centers exploring that question through collaborations of faculty, students and companies. The combination of new tools and materials demands different engineering and design skills and the ability to collaborate.

"You can't deploy this stuff with one specialist," says Chuck Hull, who invented 3-D printing and is now chief technology officer and co-founder of 3D Systems Corp. in Rock Hill, South Carolina, which makes the printers and software as well as prototypes and on-demand parts for customers. "You need teams."

What's the best preparation for someone interested in entering this new field? Hull, who has a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the University of Colorado, says that if he were starting off today in the field he created, he'd pay a lot more attention to organic chemistry and materials science. "A lot of the technology has to do with how you manipulate materials," he says. Hull also recommends becoming proficient at computer-aided design.

Kumta anticipates that graduate training for additive manufacturing will develop primarily as a subspecialty, and that the educational path will wrap in course work from materials science, physics, chemistry, biology and bioengineering – depending on the student's specific area of interest – as well as courses from the engineering disciplines.

"It's a very interdisciplinary subject," he says, "so creating a specialized department hasn't gathered much steam."

Pitt, whose Swanson Center for Product Innovation undertakes projects and research, is incorporating instruction on additive manufacturing into existing core courses and is offering electives focused on specific techniques or materials.

While dedicated programs may be scarce, research opportunities abound. Students who are interested in pursuing graduate-level work in the field can check the membership list of America Makes, which currently boasts about 30 academic institutions, including Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.

Others with research centers where students can get experience with additive manufacturing technologies and materials, typically on design and prototyping projects for other researchers, businesses and government agencies, include the Milwaukee School of Engineering and the engineering schools at the University of California—Irvine, the University of Louisville in Kentucky and the University of Texas—El Paso.

This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2016" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.