Design Process for Additive Manufacturing

Dear Colleagues,

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes are rapidly growing technologies that can produce highly complex models. Depending on the manufacturing method, the size of the part, and its complexity, it can take several hours or even days to create finished models using additive techniques. There is currently a wide variety of additive manufacturing methods available. AM models are widely utilized in the automotive, aerospace, and medical industries. Since functional models are often produced using additive technologies, they must meet the requirements related to, for example, strength assessments, dimensional-geometric tolerancing, and surface roughness.

A person designing a 3D-CAD model for 3D printing must prepare it so that its geometric parameters meet the most favorable operating conditions related to tightness, accuracy, connection between components, wear, or deformation, among other things. This task is challenging as each 3D printing technology has its technical limitations, which cause the produced model to often differ significantly from the designer's assumptions. Therefore, it is necessary to develop procedures at the design and manufacturing stages to minimize these differences.

When creating a 3D-CAD model for 3D printing, traditional modeling using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems is commonly used. Challenges arise when technological or material documentation is not available for a product. This is especially common when designing models of anatomical structures, museum artifacts, or other complex geometric models where solid or surface design is usually impossible. The reverse engineering (RE) process can solve this problem thanks to the advancements in coordinate measuring systems, data processing software, and modern manufacturing techniques. This design process is also frequently used for developing 3D-CAD models for 3D printing, but it can lead to geometric mapping errors during the design stage. Therefore, it is necessary to develop procedures at the geometry design stage of the RE process to minimize these errors.

Given the current state of the literature, standards related to the traditional design of 3D-CAD models and the RE process for AM still need to be developed. The lack of a development of assumptions using the AM technique in the design and manufacturing stage greatly restricts the commercialization of finished products for the automotive, aerospace, and/or medical industries. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to this research problem.

Dr. Paweł Turek
Guest Editor

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• innovative design
• computer-aided design
• reverse engineering
• additive manufacturing
• static and dynamic me-chanical properties
• finite element method
• coordinate measurements
• surface roughness
• numerical studies