Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax: 713.743.8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 2005

Contact: Contact: Mike Emery
713.743.8186 (office)
713.415.6551 (pager)
pemery@uh.edu

HOUSTON, Feb. 2, 2005 – Imagine a printer that’s so technically advanced that the results are
three-dimensional. Instead of a picture of a chess piece, it prints the piece itself.

Thanks to the University of Houston, students at Memorial High School don’t have to imagine it – they have one.

To better prepare future engineers and engineering technologists, the University of Houston’s Center for Technology Literacy (CTL) – part of UH’s College of Technology – is providing Houston’s Memorial High School with a Dimension Breakaway Support Technology 3-D printer for its Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) class.

The state-of-the-art printer creates plastic models of objects drawn with Autodesk Inventor 3-D, three-dimensional modeling software. Memorial’s CIM students are currently creating customized chess pieces with the printer.

CTL provides training, resources and support for other Texas technology educators in conjunction with Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a national non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the numbers of prospective engineers and engineering technologists graduating from high schools. High schools and middle schools that receive PLTW certifications can offer a sequence of college preparatory pre-engineering courses.

Working with PLTW’s Texas affiliate, CTL also hosts a two-week pre-engineering teacher training program in late spring at the UH campus.

John Hansen, executive director for CTL and chair of UH’s information and logistics technology department, said the addition of a three-dimensional printer at Memorial has been particularly beneficial to the class.

“We wanted to introduce technology into the classroom that both teachers and students could immediately grasp,” Hansen said. “This device is helpful because it allows students to remain focused on their designs and learn throughout the process.”

Hansen said that previous manufacturing and design projects involved rigorous, multi-step physical and mechanical methods, and classes often worked for days before a single project’s prototype was completed. Now, the wait time is 15 - 20 hours and students can spend more time perfecting their designs and making instant adjustments after observing the prototypes. Another time-saving factor is that the printer can create more than one prototype at a time.

Shelly Montgomery teaches CIM at Memorial. She received her pre-engineering teacher certification at UH through CTL. This spring, she will assist Hansen in training pre-engineering teachers.

She said that word of mouth has attracted students outside of her class wanting to see the printer’s results. She and Hansen hope the enthusiasm behind the chess project will influence more students to enroll in Memorial’s pre-engineering classes – and eventually in engineering and technology courses at UH.

“Our job is to unveil the mystery of engineering, and encourage students to give it a thought for their career,” Montgomery said.

About the University of Houston
The University of Houston, Texas’ premier metropolitan research and teaching institution, is home to more than 40 research centers and institutes and sponsors more than 300 partnerships with corporate, civic and governmental entities. UH, the most diverse research university in the country, stands at the forefront of education, research and service with more than 35,000 students.

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.