He has been a licensed professional engineer for over twenty years and worked primarily in the aerospace and biomedical engineering fields. He has utilized the capabilities of additive manufacturing for over a decade, originally applying it to space suit and helicopter centered projects. At the Academy, he teaches design courses that include lessons on solid modeling, and additive manufacturing as well as classic subtractive methods such as accomplished with a mill or lathe. He earned his B.E.

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... bstract Economical student-owned and built laboratory equipment is proposed as a means to increase student exposure to hand-on learning activities without the consumption of resources normally associated with offering a traditional laboratory course. The case presented is that of a course intended to expose students to the workings of an auto-pilot of a ship. It is shown that the mathematical basis behind a ball-and-beam control system is substantially the same as that behind a ship's auto-pilot, allowing the use of similar design processes for both. A bill of materials totaling less than $60 US is provided to allow students to build their own working models of the control system. A variation of the technique was piloted at the authors' institution with good success: all students who attempted to design a working controller were able to do so and successfully demonstrate it. It is concluded that the use of student-built laboratory equipment is a viable option for expanding the hand-on component of otherwise theoretical courses in at least some circumstances.