How do you effectively train 3D printing employees?

Gaining hands-on experience is essential in additive manufacturing training. It involves comprehending the process flow, starting from CAD, DFAM principles, slicing, and ultimately operating the machine.

Assess your needs. Before you start any training, it's important to assess the needs of your employees. What are their current skills and knowledge levels? What are their goals for 3D printing? Once you know what they need to learn, you can tailor your training program accordingly. Create a supportive environment. Learning 3D printing can be challenging, so it's important to create a supportive environment where employees feel comfortable asking questions and making mistakes. Encourage them to experiment and try new things. Provide ongoing support. Once your employees have completed their training, don't forget to provide them with ongoing support. This could involve offering refresher courses, mentoring, or troubleshooting assistance.

"3D printing" isn't actually a single job description. Definitely in the case of industrial Additive Manufacturing, you'd require a collaboration between different people with quite specific expertise. You could e.g. make a distinction between a DfAM expert, a printer operator, production manager, post-processing expert, and perhaps even heat treatment or other experts. So, indeed you'd start with assessing your needs, but this assessment would already keep in mind the goals and objectives of each of the roles involved. And indeed you'll fit needs to individual competences.

I believe it's important to exercise caution when considering employees with experience in hobby 3D printing. While they may possess confidence, they may not always recognize that professional applications come with distinct demands compared to those encountered by the average hobbyist. Training should be aiming at the specific use-case and materials.

I agree, a preparatory course and a lot of practice are the probably only way to learn effectively both to manage time effectively in the modelling and in the problem fixing for 3D printers, than to know every different machine and method of printing. Even using third programs to fix models is a good way to avoid most of the machines' problems of reading of the model.

Encourage staff to think of something fun or useful that they could 3D print. If you can get them excited about the possibilities of the tool, it will be a joy to learn. The cost in materials is likely negligible, and soon they will be thinking of ways to utilize this tool to increase efficiency and/or quality within their usual activities.

learning 3D modeling and printing (CAD and CAM) is always a fun. In fact, it must be our first priority to design trainings, activities in such a way where employees feel 100% involved and enjoy while doing the stuff.

I choose 3 formats for training, a lecture, a workshop and a video. Lecture comes first, where trainers are introduced to additive manufacturing techniques and slicer software, then a workshop where they start slicing models and attempt printing them to get hands-on experience and finally i give them a video that explains the slicer and it's features for their future reference.

Die mit unter angenehmste Form um Wissen auf zu nehmen kann ein 3D-Druck Podcast sein. Wer umgesetztes Wissen m?chte sollte bei einem Workshop teilnehmen und sich aktiv daran beteiligen.

The best way is to get them to learn while doing. The experience to understand and diagnose problems comes from failing forward and learning from it. The need for them to gain the interest to use the printer is very important as only with that will they understand and willingly learn to maintain their printer. The second way is also to let them hands on, giving them a way to understand the complexity of the 3d printer, giving them space and time to learn to identify the issues. But before that they should become aware of why there are limitations, to curb the unrealistic experiences of 3d printing, but also explain that almost anything is possible with such printers, if one is willing to learn and make mistakes with the 3D printer.

A short cut would be to send your staff to the annual Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) conference in the spring, where they will have hands-on #3Dprinting practices and learn best known methods.

In a world where technical challenges abound, the ability to solve problems practically is invaluable. Hands-on training equips employees with the skills to troubleshoot issues in real-time, transforming them into adept problem-solvers. As they navigate through intricate printing scenarios, employees develop the ability to diagnose and resolve issues independently, making them an invaluable asset to their organization's additive manufacturing endeavors.

In my point of view, 3D Printing must be learnt by doing, usually i start training the employees by explaining the slicer software, basic slicing information and material settings, then i let them slice each of 3 CAD models, a very simple one, another that requires supports and overhangs and finally a very tricky model, i let them try a maximum of 3 times for each model and to motivate them to give their best, i tell them they can keep only the correctly printed models, rest gets recycled. After this initial session, they're now equipped with enough knowledge and hands-on experience to practice their 3D Printing skill. Practicing and honing this skill is the most important part in the learning process.

Working in fabrication and education early on, it was exciting to get access to the technology and to learn how to bring it to life for others. One of the most valuable parts of fabrication arts is learning to think creatively and solve problems in new ways. In the end, the tangible result of those efforts is powerful and the application of those skills becomes endless! But the technical challenges are something to be ready for. Ironically, the printers themselves are the result of the same problem solving they help develop! How do you troubleshoot, repair, and provide regular maintenance? Who is responsible for providing the support and maintenance which allows problem solving to remain focused on the research and design of creating?

Learning is by doing. Providing a simple FDM printer with few spools of ABS/PLA filament will bring wonders. In fact, assigning different scenarios with some predetermined limitations in the design to group of employees will enable them to greatly familiarize themselves with the whole fabrication process but also they will learn how to troubleshoot, when the results don't match with the required parameters.

Ensure that employees have access to all the necessary resources, such as software, materials, and printers. This will enable them to practice and experiment on their own.

Peer review is very good to get feedback and reflection, a draw is made to assign a trainee's printed model to one of his colleagues to review it and discuss it with each other, after they finish i only comment to highlight any mistake they said, to prevent a wrong information from sticking in their minds. This process is very fun for them and allows them to learn not just from the trainer but from each other as well.

Constructive and timely feedback by both the ends is quite important. Providing comments on each design made by the employees also helps them to make a better design next time.

By sharing #3Dprinting content on LinkedIN, I find the community here offers great constructive feedback hence we all learn together.

Continuity of the activities (learning) will greatly improve the skills of employees. In fact, CAM and CAM is also about practice.

To support continous learning It's important that mistakes in printing are embraced as learning opportunities of an iteration process that's aimed at increase efficiency in different aspects.

Foster a culture of continuous improvement, where employees are not discouraged by failures but rather motivated to find better solutions. Acknowledge and reward those who contribute to problem-solving and learning. With good record keeping, employees should note instances where failures occurred and the subsequent corrective actions taken. This documentation can serve as a valuable resource for learning from past mistakes.

Soon we see AI assistants as interactive learning. Foundational Knowledge: an overview of 3D printing and CAD software, including their history and applications. Step-by-step tutorials: on specific tasks related to 3D printing and CAD software. Troubleshooting: errors encountered during the use of 3D printers or CAD software. Recommendations: Suitable CAD software, 3D printer models, or materials based on specific requirements. Safety and Best Practices: emphasizes the importance of safety precautions and best practices in 3D printing and design. Continuous Learning: updated information as technology evolves. Interactive Q&A: interactive learning experience by answering specific questions related to 3D printing and CAD software.

To support continuous learning, i give my trainees a list of different online resources where they can find vast information regarding 3D Printing. On a weekly basis, i ask for a research on a certain topic and when they're done i let them present and explain their research to their colleagues.

Besonders bei 3D-Druck weis der Mitarbeiter oft gar nicht was wichtig ist oder was er an Wissen ben?tigt. Hier ist es besonders wichtig, durch gute Fragen heraus zu finden wie die Situation im Unternehmen ist und was sich das Unternehmen davon erhofft, weil dann Erwartungen gut gemanagt werden k?nnen und man das lernt, was für schnelle Ergebnisse notwendig ist.

A lot will depend on the actual purpose of applying 3D-printing, and the corresponding machines you'd get in-house (although outsourcing might be a better idea! But even then, in-house expertise will allow for smoother and more profitable cooperation with the outsourcing partner). Based on this initial analysis, the hardware will also have an impact on which training is needed. This does certainly not only apply to the printer-specific training (which is always a good idea), but also to training related to design, production, post-production, software, etc...

3D printing is an excellent excercise in thinkering with Materials science (to consider how to set the slicing and extruder parameters for a durable model) and spatial thinking (to design a printable object, depending on the setup). And is also important to think 4D, since, as the stock ages even the best settings found to perfectly work once may need to be re-adapted. As many have mentioned above - learning by experience is the best case scenario (this is how I learned, myself). Get a low-cost entry-level 3D printing setup for teaching purposes, supply it with stock for this purpose, and make it freely available for experimentation and rely on skill trasferability.

The quality and which printer you buy affects how users react to 3d printing as a skillset. The slicers, filaments and the ease of use matter. The hands on experience is ,however, invaluable. There are many transferrable skills even with a stock ender 3, and getting familiar with low grade 3d printers boosts one's understanding of such technology, thus increasing involvement and participation of stakeholders who use these technologies. One needs to understand how CAD files work, but also why material quality matters, as material quality makes or breaks the 3d printer experience along with it's reliability.