A framework for designing end use products for direct manufacturing using additive manufacturing technologies

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has enjoyed rapid development over the past decade and improved process capability brings attractive potentials for direct manufacturing of end use components and products. This opens a new avenue for designers to design a much wider variety of products in a more time and cost effective way. A new research field – design for AM – is emerging, exploring new design principles, methods and rules. However, the vast majority of the methods and rules presented to date focus on the feature level, which are specifically applied at the detail design stage to ensure the manufacturability of the features for a given AM process. This does not enable designers to fully benefit from unique AM capabilities. Therefore, this paper proposes a framework that holistically considers design freedoms, AM advantages and limitations for designing end use products, providing guidance throughout process selection and different design stages. The major considerations in the design process are addressed, showing effective ways of making use of AM. Process characteristics, design rules and implications of using AM on product shape, quality and economic viability are also described.