Adoption of additive manufacturing certifications and metal additive manufacturing by technology programs

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) certifications offered by seven entities were examined with respect to title, cost, content areas, and delivery mode. A total of twenty-four AM content areas were identified based on the seven entities that offer AM certifications and from the proposed AM course at the authors' university. Earlier findings that compare AM metal technologies is included in the discussion. The cost of AM certifications and the coverage of certification content areas vary greatly across the entities. AM certification offered by Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) had more content coverage while being affordable when compared to AM certifications offered by several other entities examined in this study. With respect to metal printers, a MarkForged Metal X printer is less expensive, has a higher build volume, and has similarities with Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology and therefore can be adopted to introduce metal AM techniques to technology students. The findings, while they may not be generalizable across all technology programs, could still be useful to some programs conserving adoption of AM certifications and metal AM technologies for its students.