ON MACHINE TOOL TRAINING FOR MECHANICAL ENGINEERS

The High Performance Manufacturing Group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has a fully equipped workshop. The Department of Mechanical Engineering has more than 20 machines, commonly used to improve some aspects of teaching and also for research on innovation projects. It does also have various offimatic desktop equipments where the use of software support tools as development help is allow.
Students learning in the workshop can use available systems as a first approach to real industry and theoretical studied operations. Besides, this fact provides students a much better training, oriented to a successful career.
Innovation in machine-tool is one of the most important keys of this educational issue. Taking into account this target, it has been developed a software application defined as: “Subsystem to help both researchers and students to get the best in simulation performances”. It includes mechanical operations such as turning, milling or drilling in a simulated environment. The results show fully performance in every realistic exercise carried on.
Moreover, the development of these simulation tools can almost completely avoid the possibility of errors when machining and, therefore, getting closer to the optimal results in an easy way. Thus, combining real experimental test and simulations, allow students to identify real processes and learn practically, easily and with a much greater efficiency.