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Interviews with engineers uncover key challenges in additive manufacturing, suggesting phase-specific solutions.
The industrial application of additive manufacturing (AM) necessitates close collaboration between design and manufacturing. However, significant challenges persist throughout the product development process. To explore these challenges, we conducted interviews with 11 engineers from different companies utilizing AM technologies. These interviews revealed recurring themes, such as a lack of AM-specific mindset and uninformed decision-making, which pose challenges across different phases of product development. The identified challenges, along with proposed solutions and practices, were mapped to specific product development phases, providing a scope for development frameworks for AM. Our study indicates that while some challenges are phase-specific, others impact the entire product development process. Operational solutions for different development phases are still missing.
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Günther et al. (2025) studied this question.
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