Design Strategies for the Process of Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a cyclic manufacturing process to create three-dimensional objects layer-by-layer directly from a 3D CAD model. Today AM processes like SLM and SLS are already suitable for direct part production. The processes have little restrictions regarding the shape of the object. The challenge to a designer is to use the unique characteristics of additive manufacturing in the development process to create an added value for the manufacturer and the user of a product. This paper presents two design strategies to use additive manufacturing's benefits in product development. A manufacturing driven design strategy allows a substitution of manufacturing processes at a later stage of the product life cycle, while a function driven design strategy increases the performance of a product. The choice of strategy has great impact on the development process and the design of components. Two cases are presented to explain and illustrate these design strategies.