From 3D Models to 3D Prints: an Overview of the Processing Pipeline

Due to the wide diffusion of 3D printing technologies, geometric algorithms for Additive Manufacturing are being invented at an impressive speed. Each single step, in particular along the Process Planning pipeline, can now count on dozens of methods that prepare the 3D model for fabrication, while analysing and optimizing geometry and machine instructions for various objectives. This report provides a classification of this huge state of the art, and elicits the relation between each single algorithm and a list of desirable objectives during Process Planning. The objectives themselves are listed and discussed, along with possible needs for tradeoffs. Additive Manufacturing technologies are broadly categorized to explicitly relate classes of devices and supported features. Finally, this report offers an analysis of the state of the art while discussing open and challenging problems from both an academic and an industrial perspective.Comment: European Union (EU); Horizon 2020; H2020-FoF-2015; RIA - Research and Innovation action; Grant agreement N. 68044

Interactions of an Additive Manufacturing Program with Society

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has shown considerable promise for the future but also proposes some challenges. Many AM barriers tend to be non-technical and instead are human-centric issues such as lack of education of practitioners in AM capabilities, cultural differences, vested interests, and potentially lack of imagination. It is highly desirable for all research and educational institutions to help address these issues. This paper summarizes the additive manufacturing research and education program at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) and its interactions with various constituents, including K-12 students, undergraduate and graduate students, distance students, and industry

Additive Manufacturing applications within food industry: An actual overview and future opportunities

The food sector is one of the major economic sectors in Europe and beyond and produces nutrition for the world population. Food industry has a unique role in all countries economy as it is essential to people lives. In Europe it is the largest manufacturing sector in terms of value added, turnover and employment. On the other hand, several worldwide economic-social-technological trends are pushing organizations to embrace innovation as an integrated part of their corporate strategy, and to offer customized products tailored to market targets need. Embracing innovation became strategic in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage and to stay ahead of the competition in every industry, even in food one. Today, among all the most cutting-edge technologies, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has the potential to develop business paradigms to face an ever changing demand. AM comprises a group of technologies whose initial inception occurred over thirty years, characterized by a layer upon layer production directly from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) data. Over the past few years AM development has increased exponentially and has expanded to include new areas of research. Within all the innovative applications, one of the most promising under respect of social impacts and progress, has proved to be the technological application in the food industry. This scientific work aims at finding out potential touching points between additive manufacturing technologies and food market, either consumer and industrial, focusing on the actual and future applications

Design Transactions

Design Transactions presents the outcome of new research to emerge from ‘Innochain’, a consortium of six leading European architectural and engineering-focused institutions and their industry partners. The book presents new advances in digital design tooling that challenge established building cultures and systems. It offers new sustainable and materially smart design solutions with a strong focus on changing the way the industry thinks, designs, and builds our physical environment. Divided into sections exploring communication, simulation and materialisation, Design Transactions explores digital and physical prototyping and testing that challenges the traditional linear construction methods of incremental refinement. This novel research investigates ‘the digital chain’ between phases as an opportunity for extended interdisciplinary design collaboration. The highly illustrated book features work from 15 early-stage researchers alongside chapters from world-leading industry collaborators and academics

Design Transactions: Rethinking Information for a New Material Age

Design Transactions presents the outcome of new research to emerge from ‘Innochain’, a consortium of six leading European architectural and engineering-focused institutions and their industry partners. The book presents new advances in digital design tooling that challenge established building cultures and systems. It offers new sustainable and materially smart design solutions with a strong focus on changing the way the industry thinks, designs, and builds our physical environment. Divided into sections exploring communication, simulation and materialisation, Design Transactions explores digital and physical prototyping and testing that challenges the traditional linear construction methods of incremental refinement. This novel research investigates ‘the digital chain’ between phases as an opportunity for extended interdisciplinary design collaboration. The highly illustrated book features work from 15 early-stage researchers alongside chapters from world-leading industry collaborators and academics

A design framework for additive manufacturing based on the integration of axiomatic design approach, inverse problem-solving and an additive manufacturing database

Additive manufacturing has emerged as an integral part of modern manufacturing because of its unique capabilities and has already found its application in various domains like aerospace, automotive, medicine and architecture. In order to take the full advantage of this breakthrough manufacturing technology, it is imperative that practical design frameworks or methodologies are developed and consequently, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) has risen to provide a set of guidelines during the product design process. The existing DfAM methods have certain limitations in that the additive manufacturing process capabilities are not taken into consideration in the early design stage effectively and most of them rely on direct application of existing methods for conventional manufacturing. Furthermore, there is a lack of DfAM methods suitable for additive manufacturing novices. To tackle these issues, this study develops a design framework for additive manufacturing through the integration of axiomatic design approach and theory of inventive problem-solving (TRIZ) with the consideration of additive manufacturing environment. This integrated approach is effective because axiomatic design approach can be used to systematically define and analyze the problem, while the inverse problem-solving approach of TRIZ combined with an additive manufacturing database can be used as an idea generation tool that can generate innovative solutions. Finally, two case studies are presented to validate the proposed design framework

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed