The Role of Design for Additive Manufacturing in the Successful Economical Introduction of AM

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been around for decades while it has been at the focus point of attention for home users and industry for only a few years. The reasons for this recent awareness can be attributed to the simplicity of the process, which allows it to be used to make almost any shape in any material. This is one of the reasons companies investigate the possibilities of AM as a strategic advantage in their line of business.. In this paper studies are presented in which the introduction of AM technologies within industry is the main focus. Design for AM methodologies are presented and linked to commercial successful introduction of AM in industry. It is shown that for this introduction the role of product (re)design for AM is of major importance to successfully apply AM as a production methodology. A new (re) design strategy for AM based product development is presented, from a product life cycle viewpoint (section 2) and a product level (section 4.1)