Utilization of Resin-Based Additive Manufacturing for Investment Casting

Dr. Xuan Wang, an Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering (IME) professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, has sponsored the resin-based 3D printing investment cast senior project. The objective of the project was to thoroughly research the process and document the findings of using a resin-based 3D printed part as the pattern for investment casting. While this manufacturing process is not necessarily a new idea, the lack of technical research and documentation limits its ability to be reproducible. The research portion of the senior project included analyzing the limitations to the printing/casting manufacturing process. Measurements of part thicknesses, hole radii, depths, protrusion heights, and fillets were quantitatively studied, and surface finish, pattern clarity, and overall success were determined qualitatively. Three test coupons were manufactured and measured, both for limitations and statistical analysis on growth rates. The features measured for a statistical analysis of the growth included side lengths and diameters for intrusions and extrusions. Once the manufacturing process was sufficiently analyzed, the findings were used to produce a curriculum package for the IME 470 foundry course at Cal Poly. This included a detailed lab manual and video tutorial to promote student learning, as well as a library of CAD models for the students to manufacture. This library contains several models, including dice, rings, and die- casting molds for actions figures. To validate the completeness of the curriculum materials, a group of five students were walked through the process, and useful feedback was gathered to improve the course contents. In total, the project was a success for determining the technology’s limitations and providing educational content to the IME 470 course

Design Divergence Using the Morphological Chart

This paper presents the findings of a review carried out on twelve morphological charts completed in groups, containing a total of 686 sub-solution sketches made for a pool of 21 sub-functions. The charts were reviewed as a whole in terms of group performance in idea generation for a decomposed design problem. Then the ideas generated as sub-solutions were grouped according to sub-functions and were reviewed in terms of idea content and effort in design divergence. It was seen that a background preparation with product trials, 3D component analyses and experience in using the morphological chart method affected the number of cells that the participants completed, as well as the ways in which they filled in the morphological chart. The reviews revealed eleven factors affecting design divergence using the morphological chart method, grouping under the headings of: preparations, group dynamics, boundaries of sub-functions, and analysis of components. Besides, thirteen strategies were identified that participants followed for design divergence using the morphological chart, grouping under the headings of: beginning idea generation, effective idea generation, exploring ideas, diversifying ideas and representing ideas

A plm implementation for aerospace systems engineering-conceptual rotorcraft design

The thesis will discuss the Systems Engineering phase of an original Conceptual Design Engineering Methodology for Aerospace Engineering-Vehicle Synthesis. This iterative phase is shown to benefit from digitization of Integrated Product&Process Design (IPPD) activities, through the application of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technologies. Requirements analysis through the use of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and 7 MaP tools is explored as an illustration. A "Requirements Data Manager" (RDM) is used to show the ability to reduce the time and cost to design for both new and legacy/derivative designs. Here the COTS tool Teamcenter Systems Engineering (TCSE) is used as the RDM. The utility of the new methodology is explored through consideration of a legacy RFP based vehicle design proposal and associated aerospace engineering. The 2001 American Helicopter Society (AHS) 18th Student Design Competition RFP is considered as a starting point for the Systems Engineering phase. A Conceptual Design Engineering activity was conducted in 2000/2001 by Graduate students (including the author) in Rotorcraft Engineering at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA. This resulted in the "Kingfisher" vehicle design, an advanced search and rescue rotorcraft capable of performing the "Perfect Storm" mission, from the movie of the same name. The associated requirements, architectures, and work breakdown structure data sets for the Kingfisher are used to relate the capabilities of the proposed Integrated Digital Environment (IDE). The IDE is discussed as a repository for legacy knowledge capture, management, and design template creation. A primary thesis theme is to promote the automation of the up-front conceptual definition of complex systems, specifically aerospace vehicles, while anticipating downstream preliminary and full spectrum lifecycle design activities. The thesis forms a basis for additional discussions of PLM tool integration across the engineering, manufacturing, MRO and EOL lifecycle phases to support business management processes.M.S.Committee Chair: Schrage, Daniel P.; Committee Member: Costello, Mark; Committee Member: Wilhite, Alan, W

Design function deployment: a concurrent engineering design system

The current state of activities in the design and manufacturing industry is marked by the various CAD/CAM/CAE systems which exist as islands of automation, and are used by engineers and designers in a non-integrated and ill-structured way. Thus the design problem is examined from separate and different perspectives, rather than as a whole. The goal of this research, is to develop a comprehensive, integrated and generic design system, that will ensure the realisation of concurrent engineering in practice. To this end, Design Function Deployment (DFD) has been developed. DFD enables the capture of customers' requirements, the establishment of design specifications and constraints in a solution neutral form, the generation of conceptual designs (architectures), the development of detailed designs layouts), the selection of materials and associated manufacturing processes and the development of suitable production plans. The generated design solutions are optimised against a composite set of multi-criteria (attributes) in a concurrent manner for key factors such as performance, robustness and cost as well as other life cycle issues (manufacture, assembly, serviceability, reliability, environment, etc) in order to choose the most satisfying design. DFD provides a recipe of design methods to support the designer or design team at any stage of the design process. The optimisation process involves the use of these supporting design tools (methods) encapsulated within it. DFD also provides an integrated product modelling environment which integrates both textual and geometric design information, and enables the capture of other design information related to design intent, rationale and history. The research that led to the evolution and development of DFD involved (a) a detailed investigation and research on Quality Function Deployment, QFD, a technique well suited for capturing and translating customer requirements into design specifications, (b) an extensive review of design philosophies, models, methods and systems and (c) an extensive investigation into concurrent engineering. The findings of this research has led to the development of the structure of the DFD system, which incorporates (1) a prescriptive design model, (2) a suite of design methods and (3) supporting knowledge/rulebases and databases, which are used for the generation of the design solution space and the optimal selection of the most satisfying design for subsequent implementation

Assessing Technique Applicability towards Ideation Taxonomy for Engineering Design Concept / N. M. M. Rasidi...[et al.]

This paper aims to identify students’ perception of the level of applicability of techniques that have been applied in the process of engineering design idea generation. Various techniques have been developed to facilitate the process of generating ideas. However, in generating engineering design concepts, a special technique involving the application of creative solutions and specific engineering analysis is required. This will need students to determine the appropriateness of the techniques to be adopted which will help to accelerate the process of generating ideas. This survey employed a questionnaire that was developed based on the Six P’s creativity model; and the analysis carried out using the Rasch measurement models. The respondents consist of 160 mechanical engineering students from four local universities in Malaysia that are involved in engineering design courses. The student’s data were analysed descriptively based on the frequency of use of techniques and percentage of agreement against applicability techniques. The reliability of the developed questionnaire was 0.89, while the overall five selected techniques showed an approval percentage of more than 60 percent per context. The overall findings implied that the use of a combination of creative and technical techniques helped students in the six contexts of creativity in idea generation. As a result, a hierarchy of technique application in the process of generating ideas for design engineering concept was developed. The hierarchy of techniques was used to develop a taxonomy that could serve as a reference guide for students and lecturers in the determination of the appropriateness of techniques for the aspects of what ought to be achieved in the process of generating ideas

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology

TesisEl propósito de este trabajo de investigación fue determinar el grado de relación entre el clima organizacional y la satisfacción laboral en los trabajadores de la Asociación para el Desarrollo Empresarial en Apurímac, Andahuaylas. A fin de proporcionar al directivo de la institución, sugerencias de cambio, reforzamiento y/o de mejora. Para la realización de este estudio se determinó como muestra al total de la población, conformada por 30 trabajadores a quienes se les aplicó un cuestionario estructurado, tipo escala de Likert, para diagnosticar el clima organizacional, compuesto por 21 ítems correspondiente a 5 dimensiones, y para medir la satisfacción laboral, compuesto por 14 ítems correspondiente a 2 dimensiones, validados por tres expertos en la materia. El análisis de fiabilidad de los cuestionarios arroja un coeficiente de Alf a de Cronbach para la escala de clima organizacional y satisfacción laboral de 0.796 y 0.721 respectivamente confiables. La hipótesis principal señalaba que existía relación entre el clima organizacional y satisfacción laboral. La principal conclusión comprobó que hay relación entre las dos variable, es decir, existe relación significativa positiva entre el clima organizacional y satisfacción laboral. A nivel de las hipótesis específicas se comprobó las dimensiones de clima organizacional la estructura, autonomía, relaciones interpersonales, identidad se correlacionaron de forma significante y positiva con la satisfacción laboral. Sin embargo no se encontró relación entre la dimensión recompensa con la satisfacción laboral en la Asociación para el Desarrollo Empresarial el Apurímac

The development of product design guidelines based on a new conceptual framework

The work described provides the development, implementation and evaluation of engineering product design guidelines suitable for engineering product designers. The motivation arises from collaborative efforts that continue to be made by the Least Economically Developed Countries (LDC) and the Most Economically Developed Countries (MDC) towards the development of the engineering design field. It is argued here that product design guidelines which are derived from existing product design methods enhance the capability of engineering designers to shorten time to market, deal adequately with product design constraints and boost supply chains. The sample for the proposed study is comprised of companies in Botswana (a least economically developed country) and the United Kingdom (a most economically developed country). The research has been conducted using a mixed qualitative research approach comprised of aspects from the framework method, cluster analysis and Kolb's model. The findings have identified five themes central to the product design process which are incorporated into the engineering product design guidelines. Case study work was conducted to validate the approach. The following claims are made for contributions to knowledge: 1. A conceptual framework which is a graphical co-ordinate system of engineering and management techniques required by nine engineering product design methods. The conceptual framework is arranged according to two orthogonal axes that describe the structure of the product design process and incorporate the need function form structure, the divergent convergent structure, the product design drivers, product realisation process and product development lifecycles. 2. The product design method notation which is a register of the expressions derived from the conceptual framework and is used to communicate and aid in the selection of a group of techniques being implemented, or intended for implementation by design teams; and 3. The configuration scheme which provides a clear link between components, subassemblies, products, projects, programmes and policies. The critical point put forward by this work is that the conceptual framework is only comprehensible today because the engineering product design methods in the public domain have imparted knowledge about the functions of physical products (described here as part of the need function form structure) at the expense of human needs and the interactive forms of human responses to physical products. The contributions of this research provide a holistic and coherent means of integrating design methodologies for the benefit of design teams in Botswana. The approach is, however, universal and may also be beneficial for design projects in the most economically developed countries

Identifying Design Strategies to Mitigate the Risk Introduced into New Product Development by Suppliers

For every organization, an efficient and effective product development process is a key to generate and manage growth opportunities. Often strategic relationships with key suppliers and partners are required as organizations do not have all the competencies that are crucial to the development of a product. This is particularly true for Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) and Joint Development Manufacturer (JDM) supplier relationships, which are characterized by a high degree of supplier involvement in every stage of product development. If the interactions with these key suppliers are not managed properly, there is significant risk that the endeavor will end up with missing budget, schedule and cost goals, particularly for complex systems. Little attention in the literature, however, has been given to the risk introduced by suppliers into the product development process nor mitigating this risk through appropriate design strategies. This thesis addresses the need to develop a risk assessment methodology that would not only identify areas of concern but also identify potential design strategies to mitigate risk. In this work, metrics are derived to quantify the relative importance, degree of change, difficulty of change and degree of coupling for engineering metrics at system and subsystem levels. From these metrics, a framework is developed to quantitatively assess the risk due to supplier interactions. In addition, design strategies identified in the literature are characterized in terms of these same metrics to determine the design strategy which is most suited to mitigate the risk associated with a particular EM. Finally, a case study is presented for the hypothetical development of a 3D printer, to assess initial feasibility and utility of the framework

Review on recent advances in information mining from big consumer opinion data for product design

In this paper, based on more than ten years' studies on this dedicated research thrust, a comprehensive review concerning information mining from big consumer opinion data in order to assist product design is presented. First, the research background and the essential terminologies regarding online consumer opinion data are introduced. Next, studies concerning information extraction and information utilization of big consumer opinion data for product design are reviewed. Studies on information extraction of big consumer opinion data are explained from various perspectives, including data acquisition, opinion target recognition, feature identification and sentiment analysis, opinion summarization and sampling, etc. Reviews on information utilization of big consumer opinion data for product design are explored in terms of how to extract critical customer needs from big consumer opinion data, how to connect the voice of the customers with product design, how to make effective comparisons and reasonable ranking on similar products, how to identify ever-evolving customer concerns efficiently, and so on. Furthermore, significant and practical aspects of research trends are highlighted for future studies. This survey will facilitate researchers and practitioners to understand the latest development of relevant studies and applications centered on how big consumer opinion data can be processed, analyzed, and exploited in aiding product design