Model-based mechanical design and process planing for incremental manufacturing of multi-material workpieces

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Dröder; Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Vietor
• Subject Area: Production Automation and Assembly Technology ; Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 412330610

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

Increasing product individualisation due to market-specific constraints, legislation and technological differentiation can be observed in numerous industries. In the case of mould-based manufacturing processes, an increase in product variance can only be achieved by increasing the number of tools or by increasing tool complexity, which in turn reduces economic efficiency. To overcome these challenges, the incremental manufacturing (IM) approach was developed. IM is characterised by the combination of different robot-based manufacturing processes in an integrated production concept. Here, prefabricated semi-finished products are used as a basis for robot-based additive manufacturing (AM) steps and are optionally subtractively finalised. The overall concept is aimed at cost-effective and variant-flexible production processes in the small to medium quantity range. The opportunities presented are offset by fundamental, yet unresolved questions. The necessity for research consists in the provision of methods for product and process design to narrow down the high-dimensional solution space. The focus is on both the product structures (e.g. selection and rate of semi-finished products vs. AM areas) and the manufacturing strategies (e.g. product-specific process sequences and parameters) in such a way, that a targeted definition of product-specific process chains is made possible, while at the same time efficiently manufacturing products with optimised properties. The linking of design principles for the partially additively manufactured (material-hybrid) structures and the identification of suitable manufacturing strategies and sequences in an integrated method is regarded as a mandatory prerequisite for the utilisation of IM. Within this background, a method was researched, which enables an automated derivation of incrementally manufacturable designs starting from a conventionally manufactured reference part. These designs differ in the choice of materials (multi-material designs are possible as well), manufacturing processes, joining processes, process sequences and part shapes. To limit the high number of possible characteristics, part candidates were evaluated based on suitable analysis models for an objective selection of a preferred concept in terms of optimised design and production. Through the developed approach and its implementation, the high degree of design freedom of IM could be reduced and made usable in the early phase of the product development process.

Publications

• Incremental Manufacturing: Model-based part design and process planning for Hybrid Manufacturing of multi-material parts. Procedia CIRP, 79, 107-112.
  Reichler, Ann-Kathrin; Gerbers, Roman; Falkenberg, Paul; Türk, Eiko; Dietrich, Franz; Vietor, Thomas & Dröder, Klaus
  
• Algorithm-Based Support for the Redesign of Product Variants. Volume 6: Design, Systems, and Complexity. American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
  Redeker, Julian; Gebhardt, Philipp & Vietor, Thomas
  
• AUTOMATED PART DECOMPOSITION FOR PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE MODELING. Proceedings of the Design Society: DESIGN Conference, 1, 2365-2374.
  Redeker, J.; Gebhardt, P.; Reichler, A.-K.; Türck, E.; Dröder, K. & Vietor, T.
  
• Combined Design and Process Planning for Incremental Manufacturing. Procedia CIRP, 93, 927-932.
  Reichler, Ann-Kathrin; Redeker, Julian; Gabriel, Felix; Falke, Fabio Kai; Vietor, Thomas & Dröder, Klaus
  
• Incremental Manufacturing: Process Planning for a Scalable Production. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering, 559-566. Springer International Publishing.
  Reichler, Ann-Kathrin; Schumann, Benjamin & Dröder, Klaus
  
• Structural Optimization for Segment-based Design of Part Candidates For Incremental Manufacturing. Volume 6: Design, Systems, and Complexity. American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
  Redeker, Julian & Vietor, Thomas
  
• Prozessplanung und Fertigungsstrategien zur Herstellung von Bauteilen mittels inkrementeller Fertigung“, Dissertation, 2023, ISBN: 978-3-8027-8379-1
  Brinkmann (geb. Reichler), A.