Submitted by Administrator on Mon, 13/02/2017 - 12:30
Dr James Moultrie presented the paper titled 'A Structured Look at New Design Possibilities for Additive Manufacturing Machines' in DESIGN Conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, May 16 - 19, 2016.
Paper abstract:
Rapid prototyping machines are extremely popular, but in terms of robustness, speed and precision are inherently limited. At a cursory glance, they appear to be designed following the principles of their predecessors. This paper takes a morphological approach to analyze the design of these machines, by breaking them into individual elements to compare their performance and consider the potential for new designs. A novel ‘periodic table’ of potential designs is proposed. This analysis confirms that a lot of design space isn't being used, indicating a degree of ‘fixation’ in current products.