DFAM+ THE FUTURE DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING FRAMEWORKS AND DESIGN GUIDES
Open Access
- Author:
- Spurgeon, Todd
- Graduate Program:
- Additive Manufacturing and Design
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- February 27, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Edward William Reutzel, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Edward Demeter, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Timothy W. Simpson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- DfAM
Additive Manufacturing
Primary Machining
Secondary Machining
Design Framework - Abstract:
- This work is motivated by the discrepancies often found in the promises of Additive Manufacturing’s (AM) “Complexity is free” marketing slogans - and the realities of design, manufacturing, certification and the business of solving problems with AM. While it is true that unparalleled complexity is afforded to designers, traditionally limited by subtractive processes, this does not mean that every problem can or should be solved with AM alone. The cost of complexity is dependent on i) the methods used to generate it (Design), ii) the requirements which drove it, and iii) all the manufacturing processes used to achieve the vision of the prior two. The focus on purely the AM process has led to the many of the design frameworks and design guides from the literature being focused purely on printability or the novelty of the processes. The majority of the Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) frameworks posed by the research community are highly iterative in nature, and are scoped to dealing with the just the nuances of the AM processes. The guides published by many machine OEMs and thought leaders in this industry are often explicitly scoped just with the AM process in mind and do not give much ground to the often-necessary post-AM processes used to achieve functional requirements such as surface finish or fitment. The strategies employed to generate the net-shape with additive manufacturing have an effect on the ease or success of those post processes. A new scope of the definition of DfAM is proposed to include deference for secondary manufacturing processes along with the prototype of a new design framework to highlight the multi-disciplinary nature of DfAM projects under this expanded scope and the reality that design and manufacture does not exist in a vacuum. A feature-specific style of design guide is proposed for metal parts produced with laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) to include possible secondary manufacturing processes, as a tool to aid new designers and experienced practitioners in concept development and design decision making. The framework and feature specific guides are demonstrated in the redesign of an F-18 engine subsystem component.