The social dimension of open design

The sustainability of the quality and rate of the design process has always posed challenges. Initial open design concepts evolved from the need for an even faster rapid product development process and the desire to have co-creative platforms. Innovative open design platforms and toolkits ensure a continuous interchanging of knowledge between many and diverse stakeholders from a community with a common vision. Companies continuously research social strategies to get volunteers’ attention and keep their interest to contribute to the company’s objectives. Doing this can create significant value for the company’s customers and shareholders. Therefore, the objective of this research study was to understand the main reasons for contributing to these open design platforms. Both community- and company driven open design platforms were studied and; the benefits and challenges for utilising these platforms discussed. As a result boundary conditions were identified to exploit, without compromising the constraints of current design systems. Plans for further investigations are also given

Management and control of complexity in clustering for value creation in sustainable societies

The global production challenges we face need to be addressed in the multifaceted context of sustainability. Startup enterprises need to be both creative and innovative in order to survive and realize growth. Production clusters are usually formed as a result of common geographical location and/or similar economic activity. Clustering can support distributed manufacturing incubators to overcome social, economic and technological challenges through sharing resources. As these clusters must contribute socio-economically to its community, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, complex systems exist. The aim of this paper is to encourage ourselves to direct our research towards concepts which reduce production complexity and support simplicity. This research evaluates several production clusters toward sustainable value creation in developing communities. Key elements of a clustered based growth framework are identified to support manufacturing incubators in South Africa

Evaluation of rapid product development technologies for production of prosthesis in developing communities

The production of prostheses using conventional methods or advanced technologies makes it unaffordable for people living in developing communities. Since the Fablab revolution and due to the collaborative open source movement, numerous rapid product development technologies were invented. The idea of these movements is to provide widespread access to modern means for sustainable invention and to ensure distributed value creation. This research study was to evaluate suitable rapid product technologies for value creation in developing communities, primarily for the production of prostheses. Open source technologies were used to fabricate prosthetic ears. These prototypes were evaluated in terms of cost, time and material consumption. The accuracy of these more affordable open source technologies were also critically analysed, after developing the ears in a few hours. The results revealed that open source technologies can be used for distributed prosthesis production

A numerical analysis of machining induced residual stresses of Grade 5 Titanium Alloy

In general most manufacturing techniques alter the surface integrity of the final component. Surface integrity refers to the surface properties and their influence on the functional performance of manufactured components1. Machining induced residual stress is a surface integrity descriptor that may have a significant influence on the mechanical behavior of metallic parts subjected to dynamic loads2. Most manufacturing processes introduce some form of residual stress to the material. Cutting or more specifically machining involves large plastic deformation and elevated temperatures that may induce significant residual stresses in the surface and near surface region. When turning steel these stresses are largely tensile in nature and extend to a depth of approximately 200 μm1

Residual stress depth profiling of commercially pure titanium subjected to high-speed machining using energy dispersive diffraction

Residual stress is well-known to influence the mechanical properties of machined components. The magnitude and distribution of these stresses are critical to determine the component’s life, specifically under fatigue loading. There exists a growing need to better understand the effects of cutting parameters on residual stress and to identify more innovative methods to evaluate residual stress. Titanium has been widely used, but many of the same qualities that enhance titanium’s appeal for most applications also contribute to it being one of the most difficult to machine materials. High-speed cutting experiments were conducted on commercially pure (CP) titanium and the residual stress depth profile was analysed using energy dispersive diffraction (EDDI). The residual stress depth profile of CP Grade 4 titanium was then evaluated. Experimental results show that cutting speed and depth of cut have a significant effect on the residual stress profile. At a low cutting speed, the surface residual stresses are largely compressive, becoming less compressive with an increase in cutting speed. An increase in depth of cut also introduces more compressive residual stresses into the material

Development of finite element procedures to model the behavior of ultrafine-grained and nanocrystalline grain structures during Equal-Channel Angular Press (ECAP) processing of metals

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