Perspective Chapter: Design Considerations for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

The Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology, which was known as rapid prototyping referring to its original usage in prototype production, is progressing fairly well toward full-scale manufacturing of final parts with improvements in precision, strength, and speed. The technology is no wonder a revolution in manufacturing as it allows significant advantages over traditional part making especially for often preferred complex free-form geometries. The AM in theory should allow the production of a simple cube or complex structures of the same volume with the same time and effort. However, this is not always the case; realizing the infinitely design flexible capability of AM with more functional and lighter parts is not a trivial task requiring many iterations and part-specific design considerations such as support structures, part orientations, and interdependent process parameters. Although traditional Design for Manufacturing (DFM) concept has been well documented, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is still far from reaching satisfactory levels and correct designs are usually obtained with experience-based heuristic approaches. Here we aim to extract the very best practices in DfAM approaches from open literature and offer a generic guide for engineers designing for AM.