Investigation of professional design practice: a framework for designing plastic consumer products for additive manufacturing

Abstract

Revolutionary advances in plastic additive manufacturing (AM) have enabled it to evolve to be an economic viable production method for manufacturing consumer products in our daily lives. The capability of creating complex structures opens up vast design freedoms, which consequently requires new design mind-sets and methods to be developed to take advantage of this emerging technology whilst minimising inherent process drawbacks. This study investigates professional design practice in design for plastic AM. A framework that shows an effective way to design products is developed, enabling efficient low to medium volume production using plastic AM processes. The major factors and design considerations including AM process characteristics, materials, product appearance, functionality and production economic viability that affect the design of a consumer product are described. A case study of a night lamp manufactured by selective laser sintering is conducted, demonstrating that plastic AM is a feasible and reliable production route for consumer goods.