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DfAM: Choosing candidate products
To individualise each sign, an app was developed that employees used to submit handrail production requests from their smartphones. The company reported as much as a 50% cost savings using this novel approach to production. Formula 1 parts AM’s impact on the supply chain is a tremendous advantage to companies nimble enough to take advantage of it. CA Models reported a lead time reduction from six weeks to six days – a reduction of 85% – when using AM to produce a double-water inlet/outlet component for a Formula 1 car. The part is complex in shape and needed to be hollow for fluid flow (Fig. 7). The company optimised the build orientation and added material, digitally, to faces that would require post-machining in preparation for producing it by AM.
Fig. 6 Handrail produced by metal AM with text in German and braille (Courtesy Deutsche Bahn)
What will your winning application be? As shown, metal AM offers many benefits for production components. Applying one or more of them can help make the case for using AM. Applications where several benefits apply could be a winning solution, resulting in cost and time savings to a company. Learning to spot the opportunities is key and is best accomplished by learning the rules of DfAM as they apply to production parts. No single metal AM process or material will be right for all applications, so knowing the available options is key to not getting stuck in a single mindset. With metal AM, the value is in knowing when and how to apply the technology.
Authors Ray Huff and Terry Wohlers Wohlers Associates, Inc. Fort Collins Colorado 80525 USA www.wohlersassociates.com
Vol. 5 No. 2 © 2019 Inovar Communications Ltd
Fig. 7 Double water inlet/outlet produced for a Formula 1 car (Courtesy CA Models)
Metal Additive Manufacturing | Summer 2019
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