Design for the Additive Manufacturing Process Chain

Post-processing operations are required for most additive manufacturing (AM) processes. For production parts, consideration of these post-processing operations during design is critical to achieve design requirements. For both metal and polymer parts, the sequence of steps in the process chain can be extensive. A design framework called the Process Chain Map (PCM) is introduced in this paper that explicitly relates design requirements for the part to each step in the AM process chain. This PCM visually shows the role of each step in the process chain and facilitates communication among design and manufacturing personnel. Software implementation of the PCM enables generation of system-level problem formulations of multidisciplinary design optimization problems. An example of a metal AM part demonstrates the PCM and the formulation of such a design problem.