Design for Additive Manufacturing

This Thesis, Design for Additive Manufacturing, has been mainly focused on the design process and the considerations to be taken into account when designing parts for Additive Manufacturing. It starts with an introduction to Additive Manufacturing, the different technologies and processes are described to let the readers understand their operating principle, materials used and their strengths and weaknesses. The applications of Additive manufacturing are also explained in the introductory chapters, giving a good overview about the reasons that makes this manufacturing method so powerful and flexible. The needs of Design for Additive Manufacturing are the driving force of the Thesis, being the DTU Fablab one of the sources of research themes for this work. The methodology and the workflow when designing parts for Additive Manufacturing have been analyzed, differentiating the overall process depending on the application. The project focuses its efforts on the optimization of the design process, but also the needs of this design process have been taken into account as well. The conversion of the CAD files to Additive Manufacturing model file formats has been investigated, looking for the optimal exporting parameters. The materials behavior characterization is another important topic considered in the research, because its knowledge is basic to achieve robust and reliable designs. Furthermore, Topology Optimization is introduced as an approach to get lightweight and mechanically optimized parts. Finally, a Case Study of a Sweeper/mop redesign is presented to interrelate the different chapters of this Thesis, being also a good testing bench for the design approaches developed.