Water Jet Technologies
MIT's Edgerton Center seminar teaches students to design and build products using the OMAX Jet Machining Center, a water jet cutting tool, alongside the software that drives it. Students partner with developmentally disabled clients at the Protestant Guild Learning Center in Waltham, Massachusetts, working through the full product development cycle: identifying customer needs, sketching concepts, prototyping, refining designs, and manufacturing final parts on the Hobby Shop's equipment. The course pairs hands-on machine training with real client interaction, so lessons in fabrication are tested against whether the finished product actually helps the person it was built for. Materials on MIT OpenCourseWare include the seminar's project structure and equipment instruction, offered free with no certificate attached. It suits anyone curious about precision cutting tools or service-oriented engineering design rather than pure lecture-based study.