Design for Additive Manufacturing-Element transitions and aggregated structures

Additive Manufacturing technologies create parts layer by layer. Thereby, lots of benefits are offered. Especially extended design freedoms provide new potentials for the design of technical parts. To make these benefits accessible to different user groups, design rules for Additive Manufacturing were developed within the project ''Direct Manufacturing Design Rules''. Therefore a process independent method was defined first. Next, design rules were developed for Laser Sintering, Laser Melting and Fused Deposition Modeling. The results were summarized in a design rule catalog and support a suitable design for Additive Manufacturing. (C) 2013 CIRP.