North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
North America's Largest Metal Forming, Fabricating, Welding and Finishing Event
Engaging Additive Manufacturing Starts in The Design
By Carl Dekker at Met-L-Flo Inc. on on
Additive Manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D Printing, is becoming a very useful tool for gaining a competitive edge. With materials from Soft plastic to high performance alloys and back to Silicones the range of applications becomes staggering. With the need for specialty formulations all of these materials have a very high price tag associated with them. To overcome these cost considerations we need to look at more than the part to make it a successful application. All of these success come from when AM is not looked at as a replacement but an advancement.
Most of the parts we work with today have been designed with typical manufacturing constraints. The Design For Manufacturing (DFM) paradigms have dominated manufacturing forever. This is primarily because we did not have the technology to build anything we could imagine until recently. When I say recently, I mean the last few decades. It is still amazing how many people do not really understand what AM is or what it can do. To really grasp this we have to look can we make what we want without penalty? The answer is ‘Yes’. This means that our creativity is now free to do only what is necessary and at a new minimum.
Designing for only what is necessary is a complete change of paradigm for most designers and engineers. This now means we can look at the contact points and load distribution, evaluate what geometry will meet the requirements and now evaluate the cost of manufacturing. This is fairly straight forward and simply. But how do you get the maximum of what AM can delivery? This takes and evolution in the design paradigm.
Gaining the most from AM requires thinking in a whole new way. This means we are not looking at a component level but a system level. We can we do to optimize the entire assembly? How many parts can be eliminated or consolidated? How much material is no longer needed? How many manufacturing steps and inspections can be removed? When we start looking at thing from this perspective we start to see opportunities that could never have been manufactured. We now see cost savings and flexibility that goes way beyond what could have been conceived. We are now looking at Advanced Manufacturing and AM is just a vehicle to get there.
Learning what AM can do may take years and more. Learning where to best apply a solution can be another journey to undertake. For those that travel these paths they may find opportunities and benefits many have never seen. To start this journey only requires an open mind. With creativity at your back, the winds of opportunity can really take you places.
Hear more from Carl at FABTECH during his four presentations “Fundamentals of Additive Manufacturing”, “How AM (3D Printing) Can Accelerate and Advance Your Design”, “Using RE to Enable and Support AM (3D Printing)”and “Case Study – How to Embrace AM (3D Printing) on the Production Floor”.
Register to attend FABTECH today!
FABTECH 2024
About the Expo
North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
