A practical redesign method for functional additive manufacturing

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) liberates a lot for the hands of designers to define complex geometry and avoid many traditional manufacturing constraints. A set of advanced topological optimization and lattice structure generation tools are emerging to support the design for AM, especially in lightweight design. However, these tools are still in development and not so stable with quite limited operational maturity, which forms a barrier for practitioners to explore the design freedom brought by AM since intensive AM knowledge and expertized computation and numerical simulation skills are required. To solve this problem with an aim to enable an ordinary mechanical designer with basic AM knowledge and numerical modeling skills to design for AM at an operational level, this paper introduces a practical redesign method to decrease the height of the threshold of design for AM and realize functional design solutions. This method combines both subtractive and generative methods to define material distribution in the design space with consideration of AM manufacturability analysis and functional requirements. It can be implemented via a set of existing ordinary CAD tools, which implies its potential for a wide application. A design case on a redesign of a hydraulic manifold component is presented for method demonstration. The result shows that this method is feasible and practical for functional AM design with less AM knowledge on complex geometric or computational operations.