If you think teachers and students of Tsinghua University are all enjoying their holidays, you are mistaken. For them, summer vacation is as busy as every other day. Between spring and autumn semesters, there is also a 1-month summer semester at Tsinghua University during which, practice courses are run for students by various schools and departments so that students can enhance their professionalism and consolidate disciplinary knowledge in preparations for the coming new semester.
Metalworking Practice (a category of manufacturing practice) is a basic technology course for summer semester, developed by the Fundamental Industry Training Center of Tsinghua University. The course can be traced back to the Mechanical Skills course offered in as early as 1925 by Tsinghua University. With the division and development of disciplines, the course has now become an essential portion of students training at the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Precision Instrumentation, Electrical Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Aviation Engineering, Thermal Energy and Automation as well as an integral part of practical teaching. In each summer semester, Metalworking Practice, as an elective course for students from art, social science, management and other majors, accepts over 1,000 undergraduates for practical training.
The teaching content of Metalworking Practice is designed as a modular course, with different modules of independent functions. The course combines “teaching manufacturing engineering knowledge, training engineering practice ability and improving overall quality”, upon analyzing the needs of students from various majors and having taken consideration of the training characteristics of key disciplinary platforms such as machinery, information, humanities and social sciences, management, and science. The course content includes basic training modules such as casting, hot forging, stamping, welding, milling, fitters as well as advanced technologies like CNC turning, CNC milling, laser machining, rotary ultrasonic machining, 3D printing and rapid prototyping, and welding robots. The training module also requires students to write reports on innovative thinking and practice teamwork and creative design abilities.
After decades of trial and error, the Metalworking Practice course has developed a teaching team “led by professors, with teachers as its core, engineering and experimental technicians as its main force and skilled workers to assist”. It has made into the National Level Excellent Practical Courses list in 2004.
