Towards additive manufacturing of intermediate objects (AMIO) for concepts generation

Abstract

According to an analysis of existing Design For Additive Manufacturing (DFAM)methods,we first highlight that they present limits regarding product innovation. This paper then presents a creative approach to be integrated in the early stages of DFAMmethods. Two case studiesAand B are presented as the experimental application of the first stage of our creative approach. The results of these case studies highlight that designers need a newkind of IntermediateRepresentation (IR), especially to represent dynamic features. To address this need, we introduce the concept of AMIO Additive Manufacturing of Intermediate Objects. This new kind of IR is an expected output of the ideas generation stage. These intermediate objects are meant to be manipulated by all the design stakeholders, as an input for the concept generation stage, to enhance the generation of creative concepts for additive manufacturing.