The role of Additive Manufacturing in modern product development: a case study for consumer electronic industry
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School of Engineering |
Master's thesis
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Date
2013
Department
Major/Subject
Koneensuunnitteluoppi
Mcode
Kon-41
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
82 s. + liitt. 6
Series
Abstract
This Master's Thesis focuses on studying the State of Art of Additive Manufacturing (AM) systems and current industrial application to produce structural plastic parts for the prototyping and assembly of consumer electronic products. The work evaluates the potential implications of AM technology related to a specific case company which designs, manufactures and supplies consumer electronic products globally. This work presents a framework of AM process categories depending upon the type of application in which the technology can be implemented. Furthermore, the link between the Case Company Product Development Process was performed to explain the capabilities of each AM process category to non-expert users. During the research, three different AM machines have been analysed to evaluate their technical and economic feasibility to produced structural plastic parts for the assembly of low and medium manufacturing batches of plastic part used in the assembly of Alpha-Prototypes during pre-production series. The result of the Design of Experiment (DOE) indicates that some AM systems can be economically viable and technically feasible to produce inner structural plastic parts for the assembly of the technical prototypes. Therefore, temporary tooling and injection molding methods can be potentially replaced at initial stages of pre-production series. AM and toll-less manufacturing can be implemented to the product development process to gain design flexibility, reduce time-to-market and save cost during the assembly of technical prototypes.Description
Supervisor
Coatanéa, EricThesis advisor
Hakamäki, HeikkiKeywords
additive manufacturing, 3D printing, direct manufacturing, rapid prototyping, technical prototyping, product development process