GE’s education program invests AM into education

As part of GE’s Additive Education Program, GE Additive will offer 3D printers to more than 400 schools, reaching more than 180,000 students across the world. An initiative that will help streamline the use this technology in education.

General Electric is no stranger to additive manufacturing, having already invested several million dollars in its development- recently announcing an investment of more than €100 million in the expansion of Concept Laser. The company is now continuing with their commitment to this technology through education, offering desktop polymer printer packages to around 400 primary and secondary schools and a metal 3D printer to eight colleges and universities.

The package for the primary and secondary schools will include two Polar Cloud-enabled polymer printers, the Polar 3D printer and the XYZprinting printer. In addition, they will also receive Polar 3D’s STEAMtrax curriculum with a two-year license, six rolls of filament for each printer and one of the STEAMtrax module kits called “Tinkering with Turbines.” The countries where the schools are located who will receive these packages includes the United States, Canada, China, Germany, India, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Students will have access to Polar3D printers

GE created their Additive Education Program this past January, with a commitment to investing $10 million globally over the next 5 years to help support the development of future talents in additive manufacturing. $8 million of this will be set-aside for metal printers for colleges and universities. While $2 million will be put towards the desktop polymer printers for the primary and secondary schools.

“Additive manufacturing and 3D printing are revolutionizing the way we think about designing and manufacturing products,” said Mohammad Ehteshami, Vice President of GE Additive. “We want a pipeline of engineering talent that has additive in their DNA. This education program is our way of supporting that goal.”

3D printing at school is becoming a widespread phenomenon, with stakeholders wanting to maximize the use of this technology for production. It is for this reason that 3D printing is becoming more popular in the classroom, as learning while young could help propel 3D printing even further with new creative designs. Countries such as China and India have already created schools dedicated solely to 3D printing, to help streamline the future of this technology.

GE’s Additive Education Program has so far been a hit, with more than 250 schools and universities applying. Using a team of specialists, GE will now be evaluating each school to make their final choice. So far, eight schools have been chosen to receive the 100R metal printing machine; a printer with a retail value of around $250,000 each. These schools include Auburn University, Boston University, Iowa State University, North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, University of New South Wales, and the U.S. Naval Academy.

GE will send the printers to the selected schools later this year and plan on providing additional printers each year within four years to additional facilities. The next wave of applications will open in the first quarter of 2018, with the chosen schools being announced on the GE Additive website.

Read more on GE’s Additive Education Program in their official press release here.

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