Knowledge-based product and process design synthesis of additively manufactured non-assembly mechanisms

Additive Manufacturing increasingly becomes a viable alternative to conventional manufacturing technologies. However, the knowledge and awareness to achieve a ready-for-manufacturing and quality-ensured design of additively manufactured products are mostly lacking. Knowledge from the manufacturing process on how certain process variables affect the product requirements must already be considered in product design to assure and potentially enhance the quality a priori, thus saving time and cost-intensive iterations. Therefore, this knowledge must be front-loaded as a basis to suitably adapt product and process design simultaneously. This contribution therefore proposes a framework for the simultaneous product and process design synthesis of existing designs by providing insight knowledge about product and process design specific to Fused Layer Modeling. This is achieved via a consolidated ontology-based knowledge representation and its integration in a design environment. Thus, the aim, in contrast to most existing approaches, is to provide this knowledge on a product- and application-specific basis to parallelise product and process design for non-assembly mechanisms and exploit currently unused potential concerning the interaction between the different domains. This can shorten development times and also compensate for a lack of background knowledge in certain areas. A practical use case highlights the general procedure, benefits, and applicability.