Computer-Aided Design for Additive Manufacturing

Yong Chen, Ph.D.
3D Systems Inc., Valencia, CAABSTRACTBased on layer-by-layer building process, additive manufacturing has some unique properties. It is purely digital and therefore very flexible. Additive manufacturing can deliver cost effective solutions especially for small amount productions and therefore holds the key to mass customization. More importantly, design with complex geometries has no additional manufacturing costs. This opens the possibility to consolidate components in an assembly and even enables a product design that is self-assembled during the manufacturing process. However, to fully explore the potentials of additive manufacturing, new design methods and tools need to be developed based on its properties.This talk presents my research on developing design methods and tools for two types of
additive manufacturing processes, direct and indirect (that is, using other traditional
manufacturing processes such as injection molding and investment casting to produce the final products). First, one of the indirect additive manufacturing processes, Rapid Tooling, is introduced. Two problems in its current usage are identified. Correspondingly a multi-piece mold design method based on computational geometry and a design-for-manufacturing method based on decision-based design are developed. The methods are employed in prototype systems and illustrated by an example. Then a truss structure generation system for direct additive manufacturing process is introduced. The biggest challenge in developing such a system is identified and addressed by developing a point-based method for offsetting polygonal models. The approach is general and robust with a tight error bound. Besides generating inner shells of a given polygonal model, the method can also be used in automatically adding rounds
and fillets in a design, simulating machining results for a path planning, and generating dimensional compensations for manufacturing processes.MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2005
GERONTOLOGY BUILDING (GER) ROOM 309
2:00 - 3:00 PM

Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Shah Nirav