Design Innovation Incorporating Additive Manufacturing: Creation and Assessment of a Design Tool

With the emergence of Additive Manufacturing (AM), designers now have an entirely new manufacturing process to consider when developing a new product or redesigning an existing part.  AM has the ability to produce complex parts and fast economical prototypes which may have previously been difficult or impossible to make.  AM is a new tool to aid a design team to reach their design goal.  Many businesses may have a need to incorporate AM into their current design model. However, there is a lack of heuristics and methodologies on how this can be achieved.  To help enhance designing for additive manufacturing (DfAM), this research follows the redesigning of an existing aluminum bracket system on a satellite, which is currently made from traditional subtractive machining processes.  The redesigned part is to be made from the same aluminum compound as the original design, but now produced using AM processes.  The part will be printed by a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) machine, model M290 manufactured by EOS with the aid of topology software. The design team is following the UK Design Council’s successful and robust 4-D design method throughout the entire project.  The Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver (4-D) process focuses on user-centered design and incorporates innovation enhancing methods throughout. The Discover phase focuses on deep understanding and empathy for the user.  The Define phase uses various modeling methods to describe details of the user’s interaction with the product, process or system being designed.  The Develop phase uses different methods to create a large quantity of ideas for how the design might satisfy the user and the Deliver phase uses a set of methods to prototype, test and pitch the design deliverables. 

As part of the design project to used AM to enhance the design of the satellite, we are developing and accessing a computer based design assistance tool that will help designers to incorporate AM into their design.  This is done in the context of the 4-D design process identified above.  The tool is intended to be used by design engineers that have limited knowledge of AM capabilities and especially how to incorporate AM design capabilities into the 4-D design process (or a similar process).  The tool includes design heuristics for each of the 4Ds that will assist the designer to consider or implement AM capabilities into that design process step.  Assessment of the tool is done using a set of engineers that have some knowledge of AM but are not experts in this area.  Initial results show that the design assessment tool is very helpful when designers consider using AM and also in helping them use AM in effective and efficient manners.