Data analysis as the basis for improved design for additive manufacturing (DFAM)

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has a large potential to revolutionize the manufacturing industry, yet the printing parameters and part design have a profound impact on the robustness of the printing process as well as the resulting quality of the manufactured components. To control the printing process, a substantial number of parameters is measured while printing and used primarily to control and adjust the printing process in-situ. The question raised in this paper is how to benefit from these data being gathered to gain insight into the print process stability. The case study performed included the analysis of data gathered during printing 22 components. The analysis was performed with a widely used Random Forest Classifier. The study revealed that the data did contain some detectable patterns that can be used further in assessing the quality of the printed component, however, they were distinct enough so that in case the test and train sets were comprised of separate components the predictions\u27 result was very poor. The study gives a good understanding of what is necessary to do a meaningful analytics study of manufacturing data from a design perspective

Design for Additive Manufacturing: A Method to Explore Unexplored Regions of the Design Space

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies enable the fabrication of parts and devices that are geometrically complex, have graded material compositions, and can be customized. To take advantage of these capabilities, it is important to assist designers in exploring unexplored regions of design spaces. We present a Design for Additive Manufacturing (DFAM) method that encompasses conceptual design, process selection, later design stages, and design for manufacturing. The method is based on the process-structure-property-behavior model that is common in the materials design literature. A prototype CAD system is presented that embodies the method. Manufacturable ELements (MELs) are proposed as an intermediate representation for supporting the manufacturing related aspects of the method. Examples of cellular materials are used to illustrate the DFAM method.Mechanical Engineerin

Development of a design feature database to support design for additive manufacturing (DfAM)

This research introduces a method to aid the design of products or parts to be made using Additive Manufacturing (AM), particularly the laser sintering (LS) system. The research began with a literature review that encompassed the subjects of design and AM and through this the need for an assistive design approach for AM was identified. Undertaking the literature review also confirmed that little has been done in the area of supporting the design of AM parts or products. Preliminary investigations were conducted to identify the design factors to consider for AM. Two preliminary investigations were conducted, the first investigation was conducted to identify the reasons for designing for AM, the need for a design support tool for AM and current challenges of student industrial designers designing parts or products for AM, and also to identify the type of design support they required. Further investigation were conducted to examine how AM products are developed by professional industrial designers and to understand their design processes and procedures. The study has identified specific AM enabled design features that the designers have been able to create within their case study products. Detailed observation of the case study products and parts reveals a number of features that are only economical or possible to produce with AM. A taxonomy of AM enabled design features was developed as a precursor for the development of a computer based design tool. The AM enabled design features was defined as a features that would be uneconomical or very expensive to be produced with conventional methods. The taxonomy has four top-level taxons based on four main reasons for using AM, namely user fit requirements, improved product functionality requirements, parts consolidation requirements and improvement of aesthetics or form requirements. Each of these requirements was expanded further into thirteen sub categories of applications that contained 106 examples of design features that are only possible to manufacture using AM technology. The collected and grouped design features were presented in a form of a database as a method to aid product design of parts or products for AM. A series of user trials were conducted that showed the database enabled industrial designers to visualise and gather design feature information that could be incorporated into their own design work. Finally, conclusions are drawn and suggestions for future work are listed. In summary, it can be concluded that this research project has been a success, having addressed all of the objectives that were identified at its outset. From the user trial results, it is clear to see that the proposed tool would be an effective tool to support product design for AM, particularly from an educational perspective. The tool was found to be beneficial to student designers to take advantage of the design freedom offered by AM in order to produce improved product design. As AM becomes more widely used, it is anticipated that new design features will emerge that could be included in future versions of the database so that it will remain a rich source of inspirational information for tomorrow s industrial designers

The Role of Digital Infrastructure for the Industrialisation of Design for Additive Manufacturing

The use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) can bring opportunities for industry, but several challenges need to be addressed, specifically the digital infrastructure comprising the AM value chain. A combination of a systematic literature review and an industrial use case study concludes that there is low consideration of the digital infrastructure in Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) methods and tools which has a negative impact on the industrialisation of AM. It is therefore recommended that further studies are to be made on how to manage the digital infrastructure in DfAM processes

A smart wing rib structure suitable for design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) process

Additive manufacturing has been adopted widely across various industries for producing parts mainly due to their ability to create complex geometries, eliminate material wastage and enable faster production rate, among others. Additive manufacturing has also increased design solution space by enabling exploration of mechatronic solutions for mechanical structures. This includes the integration of smart devices into wing structures to achieve a data-driven predictive maintenance-based system. For this, there is still the need to continuously explore various ways of integrating sensory capability into a mechanical structure during the manufacturing processes to ensure improvement and reliability of aircraft components. The scope of this paper was to analyse different wing rib geometries and the influence of embedding sensory capability via design for additive manufacturing process. In this work, three wing rib geometries with cut-outs and for sensory placement were designed and analysed to estimate their equivalent stress and deformation when such sensory locations are introduced. The results confirm the idea that it is feasible to introduce holding cavities for structural performance monitoring sensors without compromising the structural design requirements. The results also show that deformation and stress are highly dependent on the rib thickness and the insertion of sensory locations

Validation of the Mechanical Behavior of an Aeronautical Fixing Turret Produced by a Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM)

The design of parts in such critical sectors as the manufacturing of aeronautical parts is awaiting a paradigm shift due to the introduction of additive manufacturing technologies. The manufacture of parts designed by means of the design-oriented additive manufacturing methodology (DfAM) has acquired great relevance in recent years. One of the major gaps in the application of these technologies is the lack of studies on the mechanical behavior of parts manufactured using this methodology. This paper focuses on the manufacture of a turret for the clamping of parts for the aeronautical industry. The design of the lightened turret by means of geometry optimization, the manufacture of the turret in polylactic acid (PLA) and 5XXX series aluminum alloy by means of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) technology and the analysis by means of finite element analysis (FEA) with its validation by means of a tensile test are presented. The behavior of the part manufactured with both materials is compared. The conclusion allows to establish which are the limitations of the part manufactured in PLA for its orientation to the final application, whose advantages are its lower weight and cost. This paper is novel as it presents a holistic view that covers the process in an integrated way from the design and manufacture to the behaviour of the component in useThis project has received funding from the ELKARTEK program of the Basque Government (Project VIRTUA3D, under Contract nº KK-2022/00025) and HAZITEK (Project ADDHOC, under Contract nº ZL-2022/00665)

Design for additive manufacturing: Review and framework proposal

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have seen fast growth in the last few decades. AM needs the implementation of new methods in design, fabrication, and delivery to end-users. Hence, AM techniques have given great flexibility to designers as the design of complex components and highly customized products are no longer binding from a manufacturability point of view. In addition to high material variety, this allows multi-material and variable mechanical characteristics of product manufacturing. This review paper addresses the design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) rules, guidelines, and tools to guide the designer to take advantage of the opportunities provided by AM whether in the early design stages (EDS) or in the later phase using computer-aided design (CAD) tools. It discusses issues related to the design for AM and proposes a DfAM framework applied in the design for the additive manufacturing process

Investigating the design workflow for designing a component for Additive Manufacturing: A case study of designing a Jet engine combustion chamber component for AM

The increasing integration of Additive Manufacturing (AM) in the Product Development and production phase has brought a need for developing a new design for manufacturing methodology which is distinct to AM. Commonly known as Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), it aims to take complete advantage of the unique capabilities of AM by developing rules, guidelines, and design methodologies. The existing studies on DfAM do not address practical problems faced during the design stage which leads to dilemmas and uncertainties in decision making concerning the design elements. Therefore, a workflow for implementing the methodologies of DfAM is important. To solve this problem, this thesis develops and documents the workflow for modeling lattice structures and minimal structures using the best tools available. In addition to this, the study analyzes the workflow developed with the help of a case study. In this case study, a component is developed for heat management which makes the use of heat transfer between solid and fluid. The design process in the case study is developed with the integration of Design for Six Sigma methodology. The outcomes are documented, and best practices from the study are reported

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