DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES: NEW APPLICATIONS OF 3D-PRINTING FOR RAPID PROTOTYPING AND RAPID TOOLING

The application of additive manufacturing technologies is becoming established in an increasing number of product development sectors. This allows a number of additive manufacturing technologies to be used quickly and inexpensively for prototypes and also small series. 3D-Printing (3DP) is among these one of the highly cost efficient technologies. Due to the low strength of the printed models today the use of 3DP is restricted to presentation models. These models are commonly fixed and rigid, e. g. no functions or motions are demonstrated. This paper presents two new developments that offer new applications for 3DP. First a new design method to create moveable functional models is introduced. In addition the results of a new application of 3D printing with plaster powder for the rapid manufacture of thermoforming tools are illustrated. For all these applications it is particularly important to take into account also the special requirements for the design of the 3D printed prototypes and components. Furthermore, the operating principle of these new technologies, with which the material is usually built up in layers, also offers numerous new design options which reach far beyond conventional design. The innovations of the design process, in particular, are worked out for the 3D printing technology and their benefits are illustrated in this paper. Two case studies demonstrate the advantages of the developed applications. Besides the technical boundary conditions, the economic advantages and disadvantages in comparison to conventional technologies are also described.