Developing Applications for Additive Manufacturing Series Production

Additive Manufacturing is currently developing from the rapid prototyping technology into an established manufacturing tool. Thus, it has been introduced in many companies all over the world. The technology already reached a level suitable for small series production and one of the next steps will be the implementation of automation into the AM production chain closing the gap to high unit numbers. Nevertheless, only few parts are produced additively right now. A reason for this is that the most application which are dedicated as pilot projects do not make sense at all, because of technical or even more often of economic reasons. This publication highlights the influence of the application development process on cost per part and therewith the business case. In addition, some levers to create outstanding AM applications are described using a real aerospace application as an example. It is illustrated that just substituting a part will in most cases not result in a successful application. Instead, a completly new approach in product development has to be implemented.