Alignment of design rules for additive manufacturing and remanufacturing

Abstract

Remanufacturing is one key element of a circular economy by closing the loop on the product level and thus maintaining or restoring the product design and the associated product properties. The remanufacturing process chain involves disassembly of used products, cleaning of parts, inspection and sorting of parts, reconditioning or replenishment by new parts, and product reassembly into as-new products. If new parts are required, additive manufacturing is a promising alternative to conventional manufacturing or the purchase of spare parts. Additive manufacturing is characterized by the layered or element-based construction of parts and does not require product-specific tools, enabling a cost-efficient production of individual pieces or small series. The use of specific design rules in product and process development to meet the requirements of the intended process enables and simplifies additive manufacturing or remanufacturing. Despite the design rules for additive manufacturing and remanufacturing, there are no design rules for implementing additive manufacturing technology in the remanufacturing process. In this paper, existing design rules on Design for Additive Manufacturing and Design for Remanufacturing will first be identified and compared, and possible synergies and conflicts of objectives will be analyzed. Based on this, a guideline for a Design for Additive Remanufacturing is developed to facilitate and promote the implementation of additive manufacturing in remanufacturing. The developed design rules enable the evaluation of a part aimed to be produced by additive manufacturing within the remanufacturing process and give advice on how to optimize the design of the part. This paper aims to derive general design rules for a “Design for Additive Remanufacturing” that specifically address the additive remanufacturing process.