A great number of universities worldwide are having their education interrupted, partially or fully, by the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Consequently, an increasing number of universities have taken the steps necessary to transform their teaching, including laboratory workshops into an online or blended mode of delivery. Irrespective of the measures taken, universities must continue to maintain their high academic standards and provide a high-quality student experience as required for delivery of learning outcomes associated with each degree programme. This has created a challenge across the higher education landscape, where academics had to switch to remote teaching and different approaches to achieving laboratory delivery. As a result, students have not been receiving face-to-face teaching, and access to laboratory facilities has been limited or nearly impossible. This paper reviews numerous approaches taken by universities to deliver teaching and laboratory practices remotely, in consideration of the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst also considering the potential impacts on the student learning experience. This review is primarily focused on the fields of engineering, science and technology, based on published literature including books, reviewing web-based provision of selected universities, institutional and national policy documents.

Additive manufacturing has already been established as a highly versatile manufacturing technique with demonstrated potential to completely transform conventional manufacturing in the future. The objective of this paper is to review the latest progress and challenges associated with the fabrication of multi-material parts using additive manufacturing technologies. Various manufacturing processes and materials used to produce functional components were investigated and summarized. The latest applications of multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM) in the automotive, aerospace, biomedical and dentistry fields were demonstrated. An investigation on the current challenges was also carried out to predict the future direction of MMAM processes. It was concluded that further research and development is needed in the design of multi-material interfaces, manufacturing processes and the material compatibility of MMAM parts.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for specific medical equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE), has rapidly exceeded the available supply around the world. Most especially medical gloves, aprons, goggles, surgery masks and medical face shields have become the most demanded simple medical equipment for healthcare services in this rapidly developing pandemic. Resulting from this difficult period, social solidarity in the world has also rapidly increased as much as the pandemic. Education and governmental institutions, commercial and non‑commercial organisations and individual home makers have produced specific medical equipment by means of additive manufacturing (AM) technology as the fastest way to create a product, providing their support for urgent demands within the healthcare services. Medical face shields have become a popular item to produce and many individual design variations and prototypes have been forthcoming. Although a good number of non‑commercial equipment has been produced utilising AM technology and donated to the healthcare services, the biggest disadvantages of this rapid manufacturing approach appears to be the longer production time compared to conventional serial/mass production and the high demand. However, most of the individual designer/maker-based face shields are designed with little appreciation of clinical needs, are non‑ergonomic and exhibit a lack of professional product design and design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) principles. Consequently, production time of up to 4-5 hours for some products are experienced with these designs. Therefore, a lighter, more ergonomic, single frame medical face shield without extra components to assemble would be useful, most especially for individual designers/makers and non‑commercial producers in order to provide increased productivity in a shorter timeframe. In this study, a medical face shield which is competitively lighter, relatively more ergonomic, easy to use and can be assembled without extra components (such as elastic bands, softening materials and clips) and which has a relatively shorter AM based production time, was designed. Subsequently, finite element analysis based structural design verification was realised and a 3D prototype was produced through an OEM 3D printer (Fused Deposition Modelling). As the result of this study, an original face shield design, which can be produced in under 45 minutes fabrication time with less than 10 g material usage per single frame, was approved. This research provides a useful product design case study for informing further research on design and rapid prototyping of simple medical equipment such as face shields for battling coronavirus-like viral pandemics through advanced engineering design, simulation and additive manufacturing applications.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) has gained much attention in recent years due to its advantages including geometric freedom and design complexity, appropriate for a wide range of potential industrial applications. However, conventional metal AM methods have high-cost barriers due to the initial cost of the capital equipment, support, and maintenance, etc. This study presents a low-cost metal material extrusion technology as a prospective alternative to the production of metallic parts in additive manufacturing. The filaments used consist of copper, bronze, stainless steel, high carbon iron, and aluminum powders in a polylactic acid matrix. Using the proposed fabrication technology, test specimens were built by extruding metal/polymer composite filaments, which were then sintered in an open-air furnace to produce solid metallic parts. In this research, the mechanical and thermal properties of the built parts are examined using tensile tests, thermogravimetric, thermomechanical and microstructural analysis.

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