A new part consolidation method to embrace the design freedom of additive manufacturing

By Sheng Yang, Yunlong Tang, Yaoyao Fiona Zhao. 2015

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract As additive manufacturing (AM) evolves from Rapid Prototyping (RP) to the end-of-use product manufacturing process, manufacturing constraints have been largely alleviated and design freedom for part consolidation is extremely broadened. AM enabled part consolidation method promises a more effective way to achieve part count reduction and the ease of assembly compared with traditional Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) method. However, how to achieve AM enabled part consolidation is not well developed. In this paper, a new part consolidation method comprehensively considering function integration and structure optimization is proposed. This presented method is characterized by two main modules. The first one is to achieve better functionality through surface-level function integration and sequential part-level function integration based on design specifications with an initial CAD model which is designed for conventional manufacturing process. The other module is to realize better performance through the introduction and optimization of heterogeneous lattice structures according to performance requirements. The proposed part consolidation method highlights itself from the perspective of functionality achievement and performance improvement. An example of a triple clamp is studied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. The optimized results show that the part count has been reduced from 19 to 7 with a less weight by 20% and demonstrates better performance.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f24c527467266a84604f09420eebea8440037832

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. M. Mehrpouya
2. N. Azurmendi
3. A. Lores
4. M. Kazarian
5. A. Gisario
6. E. Zuza
7. Filomeno Martina
8. I. Agote

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. M. Mehrpouya
2. M. Kazarian
3. A. Gisario
4. Filomeno Martina
5. W. Y. Yeong
6. Swee Leong Sing

In Mechanical Engineering

1. M. Mehrpouya
2. N. Azurmendi
3. A. Lores
4. M. Kazarian
5. A. Gisario
6. E. Zuza
7. Filomeno Martina
8. I. Agote

Citations in the corpus

• Additive manufacturing of soft magnets for electrical machines—a review (2020, background): “It has the ability to produce machinery parts of complex geometries or unify parts to reduce the complex parts count [13,14] and advanced functionalities without the need for complicated tools and molds.”
• Metal additive manufacturing in the commercial aviation industry: A review (2019, background): “Methodology for part consolidation [189]”
• A review on recent developments in binder jetting metal additive manufacturing: Materials and process characteristics (2019, background): “This, in fact, permits the optimisation of assembly designs, thereby signi fi cantly reducing the part count and fi nal assembly weight [8].”