Manufacturability assessment of CAD designs based on formalized manufacturing knowledge
About this good practice
Each manufacturing process has limitations that are specific to the product geometry, material, and to the manufacturing machine. To speed up the design process for manufacturing, at Flanders Make we developed a method to collect the in-house manufacturing expertise and knowledge and apply it efficiently and consistently on the CAD design process.
This new prototype design tool makes a straightforward assessment of the manufacturability of your CAD design based on the captured manufacturing knowledge. For example, our tool assessed a beamer cover part to be designed for an injection moulding process. The tool assists the CAD designer to assess limits of different aspects of manufacturability in a straightforward workflow.
Based on the tool’s feedback, several design iterations by the CAD engineer leads to a final design that is free of manufacturing errors and flaws. By avoiding design errors in the production phase, a lot of money can be saved, for instance in reducing the need for reworking of production moulds. It also leads to a significant reduction in development time of the overall CAD design process.
Resources needed
A demonstration (company-specific CAD designs and design constraints for manufacturing) requires 0.5 day with CAD and/or manufacturing expert.
For the next step, a full implementation (day-to-day usage with the company-specific manufacturing), an implementation project takes roughly 20 person-days.
Evidence of success
Since this prototype software tool has been co-developed together with 4 industrial partners in CAD design and production, the tool has been validated by manufacturing and CAD experts of the industry. Currently (June 2022), the tool is adopted in industrial day-to-day practice at the site of 2 industrial partners. As these companies are involved in very different manufacturing processes, the generality of the tool application is proven.
Potential for learning or transfer
The ability for manufacturing-informed CAD design has added value for all high-tech and highly industrialized regions, especially regions where high quality is essential (both in design and in production), and where first-time-right manufacturing-ready design is imperative to counterbalance high wage costs in engineering.