Teaching Creativity As a Method to Overcome Limitations in Design for Additive Manufacturing

Design for additive manufacturing is often characterized as opportunistic and restrictive design. Opportunistic design means using the freedom of additive manufacturing to create geometries that are not possible to achieve with conventional manufacturing methods. Restrictive design means limiting the geometry in such a way that it is possible to manufacture with additive manufacturing. It is common to iterate between these two steps to achieve a geometry that benefits from the advantages of additive manufacturing but is still possible to produce. Design for additive manufacturing is therefore seen as an exercise in compromise and is being taught in this way by universities and other teaching institutions.  

One popular approach based on problem-based learning asks students to apply additive manufacturing to solve a task such as the design of a machine part with specific known requirements. While this is a very concrete approach to teaching relevant skills in design for additive manufacturing, the specificity of the assignment can be limiting to the types of proposed solutions.

This paper describes an approach to teaching design for additive manufacturing that does not provide a specific functional objective but asks students to invent a geometry that demonstrates the capabilities of additive manufacturing. This paper also provides the brief of an assignment created following this approach and gives examples of creative designs and their details developed by students between 2014 and 2020.

The assignment presented in this paper has three constraints. The first constraint given to the students is the machine type and material. The second constraint is that support structures or post-processing are not allowed. The third limitation is the size of the part. In this assignment, the machines were Ultimaker 2 and 3, the material was PLA, and the size of the part was limited to 60 * 60 * 100 mm. The first reason for not allowing support structures and post-processing is to keep the focus on the design and exclude individual post-processing skills of students. The second reason is that support removal is difficult especially for complex geometries in some additive manufacturing technologies, such as metal powder bed fusion.

The students’ lack of prior knowledge of additive manufacturing limitations plays a role in the most fruitful results of the assignment, which come from when students create a design that is not possible to produce. These challenges often come from overhangs and inadequate wall thicknesses and clearances. In these cases, the students are urged to use their creativity, experiment, and iterate to bypass the problem instead of conforming to the design guidelines provided by the machine manufacturer. In this process, unexpected solutions to problems are created, which shows that students achieve a deep understanding of design for additive manufacturing. The paper presents examples of innovative solutions developed by students during the course.

Although the presented approach has been shown to be efficient in teaching students to use creativity in design for additive manufacturing, it has certain limitations and is not meant to replace a problem-based learning approach but to complement it. As there is no specific goal, material properties and other engineering elements are not considered in an assignment of this type. Furthermore, as opposed to the goal-driven approach to teaching design for additive manufacturing, where it is possible to set up performance indicators on which to evaluate the work of the students, an assignment without a goal is more difficult to evaluate.