3/28/2016 Xiling Yao, Seung Ki Moon and Guijun Bi
J. Mech. Des 138(4); doi: 10.1115/1.4032504​ 
Additive manufacturing (AM) techniques provide designers with greater freedom in creating customized products with complex shapes. When major design changes are made to a part, undesirable high cost increments may be incurred due to AM process setting adjustments, challenging designers to explore AM-enabled design freedom while controlling costs at the same time. In this research, we introduce the concept of a variable product platform and its associated AM process setting platform, based on which the design and process setting adjustments can be restricted within a bounded feasible space in order to limit cost increments. Fuzzy Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (FTDABC) approach is introduced to predict AM production costs based on process settings. The process setting adjustment’s feasible space boundary is identified by solving a multiobjective optimization problem. Design parameter limitations are computed in a Mamdani-type expert system and then used as constraints in the design optimization to maximize customer perceived utility. Case studies on designing an R/C racing car family illustrate the proposed methodology and demonstrate that the optimized additive manufactured variable platforms can improve product performances at lower costs than conventional consistent platform based design.

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