Design for Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing design is liberated from the rules of traditional manufacturing methods. Draft angles are no longer a consideration and much greater complexity in part design is now possible within one print build with no assembly required.

Consolidating parts is an obvious advantage of DfAM and additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing processes enable the production of geometric shapes that would otherwise require assembly of multiple parts. When designers think of the entire product holistically instead of just one part, costs can be saved while making the overall product more effective and efficient.

Additive manufacturing adds material in layers instead of removing material like CNC machining. Creating products layer by-layer is inherently less wasteful than traditional subtractive methods of production. With this highly-efficient approach, weight of products can be substantially reduced and unused materials in the print bed can be reused making additive manufacturing very sustainable.

While additive manufacturing processes are significantly slower than injection molding for fabricating components, they are better suited for low-part quantities as there is no startup tooling required for production. And relatively early in the design activity for DfAM, the decisions taken will commit the operation to costs which will be incurred later, providing the opportunity to build-in additional cost savings.

It's now economical to design and manufacture to fit individual requirements, deliver better ergonomics, and produce small batch serialization and lot identification for industries that require it, while having the option to unlock new business models and special edition products at scale.