Investigation of design for additive manufacturing in professional design practice

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies are widely adopted in design practice for prototyping. However, the extent to which practitioners are knowledgeable and experienced in designing components for series production using AM remains poorly understood. This study presents the results of an online survey aimed at uncovering this emerging design activity. 110 practising designers responded. Most the respondents remain sceptical about the potential for AM as a process for series production, citing cost and technical capabilities as key barriers. Only 23 reported experience in designing components for series production using AM. The survey revealed that these designers have developed their own ‘design rules’ based primarily on personal experience. These rules however tended to focus on ensuring ‘printability’ and did not provide support for taking advantage of the unique capabilities of AM processes. Based on the responses we found that components designed for series production using AM are likely to be used in consumer goods and healthcare products, typically having a production volume of less than 1000 units per annum. The designers tended to treat AM processes as a uniform set of production processes, and so the design rules they used are generic and not directed to the capabilities of specific AM processes.