Abstract
An account is given of a scheme for teaching design-development engineering to undergraduates which has now been in operation since 1960 in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the University of Birmingham.
The essential feature of this scheme is that selected groups of final year students are engaged on the design of research and/or teaching equipment currently required in the Department. These designs are detailed by second-year students and are subsequently manufactured by them during their vacation employment in industry. The manufactured designs are taken back by them to the University to be developed in the first term of their final year. Following this, the equipment is either fed into the teaching or research activities or re-designed to start on a new cycle. Thus, the students concerned get direct experience of the complete design-production-assembly-development sequence.
A description of the detailed working of the scheme, its organization and the experience gained in running it, is given. A number of completed designs are discussed. A detailed statement of the overall drawing-design teaching system is presented in Appendix I.
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