Well-equipped teaching laboratories in the DPIM provide basic platforms for experimental teaching and research activities of students.
(1) Teaching Lab of Manufacturing Engineering is an important part of the National CIMS Engineering Research Center, National Tribology Laboratory, the National Demonstration Centre, built under the support of 211 and 985 and other cooperation projects. The laboratory has a large number of advanced manufacturing and measurement equipment, including: horizontal machining centers, vertical machining centers, turning centers, EDM machine, parallel machine tools, industrial robots, nano-scale ultra-precision stage, portable articulated arm measuring machines, laser tracker, machine modal tester, etc., also has a large CAD / CAM / CAE software. All these things will well support teaching experiments and scientific research for the undergraduate and graduate students.
The Lab provide 15 undergraduate experiments, 6 graduate student experiments, covering two undergraduate required courses (Fundamentals of Manufacturing Engineering, Advanced Manufacturing Technology), four professional orientation courses (Numerical Control Technology, hydraulic transmission and control, precision and specialty manufacturing, robotics technology and Application), three graduate elective courses (manufacturing systems, computer-aided manufacturing, robotics and bionics). The Lab also provide 4 created practice coursed for undergraduate independent (Special Experiments of Electromechanical System, CNC machinery and innovative design practices, innovative design and control of parallel mechanism, and Exploration to Scientific Research of Lab - humanoid robotics and RoboCup robot soccer). CNC machinery and innovative design practice has gained first prize of Tsinghua University Experimental Technology Achievement Award, first and second prize of Tsinghua University Teaching Achievement Award. Robot innovative design practice gained first prize of Beijing teaching Achievement Award and Tsinghua University Teaching Achievement Award. “Innovative design of parallel mechanism” and “series of experiments of influencing factors for quality of machining "gained the second prize of Tsinghua University experimental Technology Achievement Award.
Figure 1 Parallel equipment and control experiments
(2) CAD Teaching Centre located in the center of the campus, is dedicated to establish a digital design and digital manufacturing center whose main task is to cultivate students’ creative ability and comprehensive ability using what they have learned , can be used both for teaching and research purpose with high level facilities.
The center applies product lifecycle management as main line, cooperated with the course reform of foundations of machine design, contemporary design technology, comprehensive practice of machine design, integrated CAD/CAM, to establish a teaching center that can be used by whole mechanical school and relative disciplines of other schools or departments to cultivate students’ practical engineering ability to solve practical engineering problems using various technology and engineering tools, with first class engineering software of CAD,CAM,PLM,CAE and digital factory.
There are 37 courses using CAD teaching center every year, include foundations of machine design, contemporary design technology, comprehensive practice of machine design, integrated CAD/CAM. Over 3000 students do their experiments, practices and projects in CAD teaching center. In order to cooperate with corresponding courses reform, the center develop many teaching experiments, include 2D and 3D CAD modeling，FEA, mechanism analysis, kinematics and dynamics analysis, NC simulation and digital factory and so on. All those works contributed to accelerate relative courses reform, promote the teaching quality of mechanical engineering and cultivate students comprehensive and team work ability .For those purpose, the center developed over 40 sets of courseware and instruction manual for teachers and students.
CAD Teaching Center has already become open center where students can use the facilities at any time. The center also supports many teaching activities organized by other school and departments.
The establishment of CAD teaching center, started from to satisfy the basic requirements of teaching activities, now pays much attention on international exchange and cooperation, aimed to provided an international platform for undergraduate students and graduate students.
Sino-French PLM innovation design center hosted in CAD teaching center. We invited French professors to open courses for our students, organized two countries students to do their projects many other activities together .It is a good opportunity for two countries students to learn and understand each other.
Autodesk digital innovation design lab, different from other cooperation style, not only provides the software ,but also pays attention on the digital design style and education pattern and focuses on how to establish real engineering projects and design courses.
All those centers, except bringing a lot of valued engineering software, also established a platform for international exchange. It is profitable to improve our teaching activities, cultivate students’ international consciousness and communication ability. Several courses have benefit from the cooperation. It is a new way to explore international teaching for undergraduate students.
The future plan of CAD teaching center is to focus on relative practical teaching activities of mechanical engineering education , from layout of hardware to teaching courseware, development of project-based training ,to pay attention on cultivation of team work spirits, make students learn to mix relative knowledge of different disciplines, establish systematic view and creative thinking, can organize and coordinate team work, to become an important teaching center of cultivating leaders of the areas.
Figure 2 Visit engineering design center of airbus
(3) Engineering Graphics Teaching Laboratory is one of the national key demonstrated centers on teaching and practice. It provides platform in both classroom teaching and practice activity for national excellent course of Mechanical Drawing, which covers the curriculums such as Fundamentals of Machine Design A, the Practice of Mechanical Drawing, Engineering Graphics and the foundation of Engineering Graphics and so on. There are 150 square meters workspace of the laboratory with more than 1000 model for all sorts of drafting. The laboratory provides curriculums of Mechanical Drawing and some other related courses for more than 2400 undergraduate students from more than 80 classes each semester.
At present, the laboratory carries out a series of practice teaching activities such as Model Cognition and Space Imagination Training, Divergent Thinking Training, Typical Parts Mapping Training, and Assembly and Disassembly Training.
Engineering Graphics Laboratory plays a significant role in cultivating students’ abilities in the image thinking, space imagination and innovative thinking, which lays a solid foundation for the innovative design for the students.
Figure 3 Teaching Activities
(4)The Creative Machine Design Teaching Laboratory belongs to the machine design engineering institute. It took charge of the course related experiments, such as the machine mechanism, the machine design, the comprehensive practice of machine design, the fundamental theory and practice of mechanical engineering, the machine optimization, the mechanical vibration and other practice experiment. The laboratory has the mechanism laboratory, the machine structure laboratory, the mechanism and structure assemble laboratory, the hydraulic power transmission and control laboratory, sealing and lubrication laboratory, the bio-machine laboratory, the rotor dynamics laboratory and manufacture laboratory. At present, the creative machine design laboratory runs 24 different experiments. The area reaches up to 600 square meters. Each year, the laboratory receives more than 1000 students. The experiments personal hours done by the undergraduate students reaches to 12000. This gives the strong support for the training of undergraduate students.
The designed experiments are consisted of three stages to adapt to the different stage of study. For the freshman students, we have the machine structure and mechanism showcase. Those are the selected subjects for recognize working principle and structure of the often met machines. We also collected the inventive machine examples for generating of inventive ideas. The second stage of the experiments coordinates with the theoretical courses. The junior students need not only to observe the phenomena and to know how to measure the mechanical parameters through the use of sensor, but also need to analyze the reason. This could give the students to apply the theory to the practical machines. The comprehensive experiments have the following requirements. Students need to analyze the real problem in the procedure of machine design activities. It gives the students the chance to combine the theory with practice. It also enhanced the capability of students to settle down the real problems. The good environment of experiments and practice makes the teaching and training goal of our university engineering education to be smarter. At present, many universities inland had borrowed or copied our way of practice education in their procedure of engineering education.
Figure 4 The machines used for the real object analysis
(5) Experimentation Teaching Center for Measurement and Control Technology comprises 6 teaching laboratories:
(1) Laboratory of Modern Measurement Technology
(2) Laboratory of Mechatronics
(3) Laboratory of Electromechanical Control
(4) Laboratory of Measurement Systems
(5) Laboratory of Virtual Instrument and Measurement
(6) Laboratory of Optics and Length Metrology
The center occupies a surface area of 500 m2, offering 2 core undergraduate courses for the School of Mechanical Engineering, 13 compulsory specialty courses and 23 elective courses, of which “Fundamentals of Measurement Technology” and “Fundamentals of Control Engineering” are the 2 Elaborate Courses of Tsinghua University and the “Higher Education” Elaborate Courses of Beijing Municipality.
Under the support of the department and the university, the center has witnessed a great progress in cultivating the talents full of research ability and creative spirit. The center undertakes experiments for courses for the department and the School of Mechanical Engineering, providing equipment for the experiments for courses of measurement and control, precision instruments, microcomputer, and electrical circuit design, accepting yearly 5000 person-times for experiments.
In recent years, supported by the university’s “211” and “985” projects for laboratory development, the center has increased many new experiments and advanced equipment. Cooperated with industries, the center has established 3 joint laboratories: Tsinghua-NI Virtual Instrument Joint Laboratory, Tsinghua-NORCO Modern Measurement Technology Joint Laboratory, and Tsinghua-Shengbo Concurrent Embedded Computer Joint Laboratory, providing both undergraduates and graduate students with software and hardware for virtual instruments, industrial measurement and control, and embedded microcomputers, holding contests for creative designs to further develop student’s abilities in doing experiments and researches. To promote the international cooperation and academic exchanges, the center invited famous professors from foreign universities to give lectures and hold seminars to further improve the practice education.
The center pushes forward actively the education reform, expands the scale of practice education, tries new modes for practice education, and explores modern laboratory administration and running modes for higher efficiency and greater achievements.
(6) Teaching Laboratory of Optics and Length Measurement belongs to the Institute of Opto-electronic Engineering. It takes charge of all the experiments of the undergraduate and graduate courses offered by the Institute of Opto-electronic Engineering, such as Optical Engineering Fundamentals, Circuit Design Practice, Opto-Electrical Technology and System Experiment, Design of Optoelectronic Instruments, Design Practice of Optoelectronic Instruments, Modern Optics Experiments, Optical Measurement Methods and Experiments and other practices. At present, the laboratory runs more than 30 different experiments and covers different fields, including Optics, Electric Circuit, Photoelectricity, Measurement and Instrument. The area is 225 square meters. Each year, the laboratory receives more than 180 undergraduate and graduate students. The sum of the experimental hours done by these students is larger than 2400. This gives the strong support for the experimental skills and practical capacities training of undergraduate and graduate students.
The experiments are consisted of three stages to adapt to the different phases of study. For the junior students, the basic phenomena and basic principles of Optical Engineering should be quantitatively known well, the focus is mathematical expressions of basic rules beyond the learned Optics in College Physics. For senior students, the combination of Optics and Electronics is emphasized, including the conversion between them, and the generation, emission, modulation, detection and process of the optical information. For senior and graduate students, several carefully designed experiments are afforded to the synthesis of Optics, Mechanism, Electronics and Computer in typical optical instruments. In consequence, the students’ capacities of exploiting theoretical knowledge and solving practical problems are increased step by step.
