An Appropriateness Analysis for Additive Manufacturing Based on a Global Performance Index

Abstract

The appearance of layering manufacturing technologies as called 3D printing or additive manufacturing changed the way we design and fabricate the product. The more complex geometric surfaces of the product are able to be manufactured thanks to these technologies. However, these technologies still have several technological limitations such as materials, thermal deformation, removal of support structures, etc., and they have a strong influence on the manufacturability of the technology. Therefore, a new approach is presented in the paper that allows us to analyze the manufacturability for additive manufacturing based on the global performance index. The index is defined to evaluate the appropriateness of an additive manufacturing technology that we used to fabricate the designed product.