Welcome to the course

Welcome to the course!

Additive manufacturing is a rapidly growing field and we are happy to shed some light on how it is used for business growth in this three-week course.

We first acknowledge that additive manufacturing is widely also known as 3D printing. To avoid confusion and to keep to one term, we will consistently use the term additive manufacturing. The relevant terminology standards see the two terms as interchangeable so feel free to use either term in your discussions.

This course is part of the EIT RawMaterials additive manufacturing curriculum. Please see the website of the 3D ACCELERATOR-AMASI project for the other courses.

While you can take the course without any previous knowledge in additive manufacturing, we highly recommend you to first take the course General Introduction to Metal Additive Manufacturing provided by our partner university KU Leuven on the FutureLearn platform.

You will get the most out of the course if you participate in the discussions and complete the tasks. We encourage you to interact with other learners and the educators of the course in the discussion sections of the learning steps.

What you’ll be learning:

In the first week, we will learn what makes additive manufacturing different from conventional manufacturing. We will then evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of additive manufacturing and discuss when it should be used. Finally, we will look at how additive manufacturing is used in different parts of product development stages.

In subsequent weeks, we will be taking a look at how additive manufacturing is used strategically, and we will familiarize ourselves with the ever-evolving ecosystem of additive manufacturing.

Your learning outcomes:

By the end of the course, you will be able to describe the main application areas of additive manufacturing. You will also master the main advantages of additive manufacturing and you will be familiar with its ecosystem.

Meet the team:

The lead educator of the team is Professor Jouni Partanen. Professor Partanen is the head of department of mechanical engineering at Aalto University and a professor in the advanced manufacturing and materials (AM2) research group. Professor Partanen has had a long career in additive manufacturing as the Engineering and Advanced Technology Manager in 3D Systems, one of the largest and most prestigious companies in additive manufacturing history.

Joining Jouni are his post-doctoral researcher Sergei Chekurov and doctoral student Kirsi Kukko who will be with you in the discussions and quizzes.