Assembly Design of Additive Manufacturing Products: A Computational Framework for Part Separation

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) allows for the manufacturing of complex geometry parts as a single object regardless of their geometric complexity. However, manufacturing a consolidate object is not always to be better than the assembly approach. There are several practical scenarios which often require an assembly approach, i.e., (1) to achieve specific mechanical functionality in the product and aesthetic aspects; (2) to fit a product component in a predefined buildable space, particularly the case where large-scale products are required to be fitted with a developing platform space; and (3) to improve the additive manufacturing productivity (by minimizing processing time, improving product quality, surface finish and reducing material/support cost). In this paper, a computational framework is proposed to decompose the initial object design into several assemblies with the aim to minimize the total AM processing time. The decomposed components can be arranged into a minimum printing height space, thus it reduces the number of printing layer significantly, yielding to a build-up time reduction even if some time is spent in required assembling operations. Computation framework is implemented for three medium size object geometries. The presented study points out that the part decomposition and assembling approach can considerably reduce the total AM processing time. The methodology supports AM to be extended for a broad range of medium size products, and leads to strengthening the customizability of the products.