Product model-based identification of potentials of additive manufacturing in the design process

DFX 2017: Proceedings of the 28th Symposium Design for X, 4-5 October 2017, Bamburg, Germany

Year: 2017
Editor: Dieter Krause, Kristin Paetzold, Sandro Wartzack
Author: Timo, Richter; Felix, Schumacher; Hagen, Watschke; Thomas, Vietor
Series: DfX
Institution: TU Braunschweig
Section: Smart Engineering
Page(s): 177-190
ISBN: 978-3-946094-20-3-15

Abstract

Additive manufacturing processes have become a viable alternative to conventional manufacturing for end-use products due to its potentials like tool-less production, and capabilities to realize new design features like grad-ed materials. However, designers are not sufficiently familiar with these capa-bilities. Especially, those concerning the critical review of products’ functional scope, used (physical) effects, and working structures of technical systems are not identified by designers who are normally achieving only incremental advances of predecessor products. The presented paper describes an ap-proach enabling designers to overcome thinking barriers by generating prod-uct models allowing different views on the product to identify unapparent solution principles of additive manufacturing.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, product models, knowledge based engi-neering, solution principles