Design Consideration for Additive Manufacturing: Fused Deposition Modelling

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies have progressed in the past few years and many of them are now capable of producing functional parts instead of mere prototypes. AM provides a multitude of benefits, especially in design freedom. However, it still lacks industrial relevance because of the absence of comprehensive design rules for AM. Although AM is usually advertised as being the solution for all traditional manufacturing design limitations, the fact is that AM only replaces these limitations with a different set of restrictions. To fully exploit the advantages of AM, it is necessary to understand these limitations and consider them early during the design process. The establishment of design considerations in AM enables parts and process optimization. This paper discusses the design considerations that will lead to optimize part quality. Specifically, the work discusses the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) due to its common use and availability. These considerations are drawn from literature and from experiments done by the authors. The experiments done by the authors include an investigation for the influence of elevated service temperature on the performance of FDM PLA parts, benchmarking the capability of FDM to print overhangs and bridges without supports, studying the influence of processing parameters over dimensional accuracy, and the effect of processing parameters on the final FDM samples modulus of elasticity. The work presents a case study investigating the correct clearances for FDM parts and finally a redesign for AM case study of a support bracket originally manufactured using traditional manufacturing methods taking into consideration the design considerations discussed in this paper.