James Anderton: The dream of advanced manufacturing is push-button, one-step manufacturing: art to part, seamlessly, with no multiple steps in between. I'm with Duann Scott, business development manager, additive strategy from Autodesk. Duann, manufacturing-aware software: it almost sounds like sci-fi! What do we mean by manufacturing-aware software?
Duann Scott: I think it's more like common sense! If you design something without being aware of what process it can use to make it, the chances of success are very very low. So, we're trying to put as much intelligence about a manufacturing process into our designs up front, so that design engineers can know how to design that particular process. We're pushing this first with additive manufacturing because it's such a digital process. There's room for a digital workflow. We can make this happen through design optimization, simulation, and generative design.
JA: In the traditional manufacturing roles, the designer designs the part, and then the manufacturing engineer runs back waving a blueprint and says, ‘this is nonsense, I can't make this. Remove that undercut, change that boss, et cetera.’ Slowly, there's a negotiation between the two, and after a few weeks, you get a produced part, but a lot of time is wasted, and there's some cost involved in that. Can we truly eliminate that?
DS: We can learn faster. So, we're not going to say you're going to have the instant solution to your problem but using design software is going to guide you to explore how to make that happen. With our generative design software, you input the problem, you say, this is the kind of space I can work in, this is the loads, this is the kind of force going in the part and these are materials we are willing to explore. Our software will generate tens to hundreds of options for you to explore. Then you can weight the criteria. You can say weight is more important than stiffness, or strength is more important than surface properties, for example. You can compare those in a graph and find a design which will better suit your requirements. The kernel of the simulation is based on a manufacturing process, so it knows that you can't have something beyond certain bounding box, you need undercuts, you need support material, so it creates only solutions which can be manufactured.
JA: In the subtractive world, of course, the route to high efficiency, speed to market and low cost is to simulate as much as possible up front, and only cut metal at the end of the process. But now, in the additive world, you can iterate your way to greatness. You can try something 20 times to get the design just right. Is there a right or wrong way to do this?
DS: You can iterate physically, but you still need to design it, manufacture it, allow it to cool, machine it, test it… and that still takes a long time. Instead of doing a linear process where you do step changes iteratively, you can do it simultaneously, so you save a lot of time.
JA: Manufacturing-aware software: we're talking about 3D printing. Is this exclusive to additive manufacturing? Is this is a software usable for subtractive technology?
DS: We're starting with additive manufacturing because we really have a lot of control over the process, and you can have a really complex parts. But, we are also doing the subtractive processes as well. For example, this design here.
This is your typically-designed CNC mill part, and it's pretty heavy. So, we can optimize it. We take the same basic geometry and add a lattice structure and make it much lighter.
Then, it also takes the same design criteria and use generative design to make it for a 5-axis CNC mill, and you get a different shape again.
JA: Manufacturing-aware software: lighter, stronger, faster parts, says Duann Scott, Business Development Manager at Autodesk.