Extended Approach to Optimize Modular Products Through the Potentials of Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

In modular products conflicting objectives may occur. This leads to characteristics as component-dependent oversizing and undersizing as well as increased complexity of the interfaces. These conflicts can be resolved using the potentials of AM processes. For the best use possible, the potentials are systematically considered in the early design phases as part of an extended procedure. The extended procedure improves the benefit-effort ratio of modular respectively individual products and a further optimization of the product architecture and consideration of synergy effects is achieved.

Identification of Optimization Areas of a Transtibial Prosthesis Through the Potentials of Additive Manufacturing Processes

“…Considering the previously mentioned contradicting goals and the capabilities of AM, a so called extended approach was developed by Steffan et al The approach reduces the design complexity systematically by searching for optimization areas. These are determined by analysing the individual functions of a product (Steffan et al, 2020a). How this is done will be explained in the next subchapter.…”

“…After the combination of the partial solutions into principle solution variants, these are filtered through selection and evaluation methods, like the commonly employed pair-wise comparison or a point rating (Haberfellner et al, 2019). More details on the individual steps of the extended approach can be taken from (Steffan et al, 2020a). In the following chapter the extended approach is applied to an existing mechanical transtibial prosthesis.…”

“…In principle, these are suitable for additive manufacturing through the potential of function integration. An example is an integrated head-up display within a 3D printed motorcycle helmet as an optional feature (Steffan et al, 2020a).  Individual optimization: These optimization areas can be identified on the basis of the input variables or the output variables of a function.…”

“…This can be individualized to ICED21 every user. Consequently one can achieve a more uniform transferal of forces from the helmet to the users head (Steffan et al, 2020a). The identified functions are then used as variant drivers as described by Pahl and Beitz (Feldhusen et al, 2013).…”

“…To deal with this problem, an extended approach was presented at DESIGN 2020. The approach identifies functions of products which are relevant for optimization through the potentials of the additive manufacturing (AM) (Steffan et al, 2020a). In this contribution, a mechanical transtibial prosthesis as depicted in Figure 1 (right) is investigated for optimization potentials using additive manufacturing processes.…”