abstract: Digital Fabrication has played a pivotal role in providing reality to industrial designers' ideas since its first commercial use in late 80's. Making the final prototype of a design project has been the initial assumed use for these technologies in the design process. However, new technology advances in this area offer further opportunities for designers. In this research these opportunities have been carefully explored. This research will be conceptualized through discussing the findings of a case study and theories in the areas of Industrial Design methodology, digital fabrication, and design pedagogy. Considering the span of digital fabrication capabilities, this research intends to look into the design-fabrication relation from a methodology perspective and attempts to answer the question of how the digital fabrication methods can be integrated into the Industrial Design process to increase the tangibility of the design process in very first steps. It will be argued that the above is achievable in certain design topics - i.e. those with known components but unknown architecture. This will be studied through the development of series of hypothetical design processes emphasizing the role of digital fabrication as an ideation tool rather than a presentation tool. In this case study, two differing processes have been developed and given to Industrial Design students to design specific power tools. One of them is developed based on the precedence of digital fabrication. Then the outcome of the two processes is compared and evaluated. This research will introduce the advantages of using the digital fabrication techniques as a powerful ideation tool, which overcomes the imagination problems in many of complicated design topics. More importantly, this study suggests the criteria of selecting the proposed design methodology. It is hoped that these findings along with the advances in the area of additive and subtractive fabrication will assist industrial designers to create unique methodologies to deal with complicated needs both in practice and design education. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Design 2012

This diploma thesis in theoretical part describes methods of Reverse engineering and Rapid prototyping. Each method describes its characteristics, pros and cons and usability. Practical part deals with application of these methods on part of a ledge of Škoda 1000 MB, digitalization of object, creating a new volume model, analyzing its dimensions and geometry using deviation analysis, creating prototype, choosing suitable manufacturing technology and technical-economical aspects.

The development of protype applications with sensors and actuators in the automation industry requires tools that are independent of manufacturer, and are flexible enough to be modified or extended for any specific requirements. Currently, developing prototypes with industrial sensors and actuators is not straightforward. First of all, the exchange of information depends on the industrial protocol that these devices have. Second, a specific configuration and installation is done based on the hardware that is used, such as automation controllers or industrial gateways. This means that the development for a specific industrial protocol, highly depends on the hardware and the software that vendors provide. In this work we propose a rapid-prototyping framework based on Arduino to solve this problem. For this project we have focused to work with the IO-Link protocol. The framework consists of an Arduino shield that acts as the physical layer, and a software that implements the IO-Link Master protocol. The main advantage of such framework is that an application with industrial devices can be rapid-prototyped with ease as its vendor independent, open-source and can be ported easily to other Arduino compatible boards. In comparison, a typical approach requires proprietary hardware, is not easy to port to another system and is closed-source.

In the power generation sector, more specifically, the gas turbine industry, competition has forced the lead time-to-market for product advancements to be more important than ever. For design engineers, this means that product design iterations and final product development must be completed within both critical time windows and budgetary constraints. Therefore, two areas that have received significant attention in the research and in practice are: (1) rapid prototyping technology development, and (2) rapid prototyping technology selection. Rapid prototyping technology selection is the focus of this research. In practice, selecting the rapid prototyping method that is acceptable for a specific design application is a daunting task. With technological advancements in both rapid prototyping and conventional machining methods, it is difficult for both a novice design engineer as well as an experienced design engineer to decide not only what rapid prototyping method could be applicable, but also if a rapid prototyping method would even be advantageous over a more conventional machining method and where in the manufacturing process any of these processes would be utilized. This research proposes an expert system that assists a design engineer through the decision process relating to the investment casting of a superalloy gas turbine engine component. Investment casting is a well-known technique for the production of many superalloy gas turbine parts such as gas turbine blades and vanes. In fact, investment-cast turbine blades remain the state of the art in gas turbine blade design. The proposed automated expert system allows the engineer to effectively assess rapid prototyping iii opportunities for desired gas turbine blade application. The system serves as a starting point in presenting an engineer with commercially-available state-of-the-art rapid prototyping options, brief explanations of each option and the advantages and disadvantages of each option. It is not intended to suggest an optimal solution as there is not only one unique answer. For instance, cost and time factors vary depending upon the individual needs of a company at any particular time as well as existing strategic partnerships with particular foundries and vendors. The performance of the proposed expert system is assessed using two real-world case studies. The first case study shows how the expert system can advise the design engineer when suggesting rapid manufacturing in place of investment casting. The second case study shows how rapid prototyping can be used for creating part patterns for use within the investment casting process. The results from these case studies are telling in that their implementations potentially result in an 82 to 94% reduction in design decision lead time and a 92 to 97% cost savings.

Point-of-care DNA diagnostics for resource-limited settings require high sensitivity and low limits of detection but is constrained by a limitation on the complexity of instrumentation and resource consumption. To assist in the research and development of such technology, rapid-prototyping offers quick turnaround times from ideation to proof-of-concept testing at reduced costs. All-solution processed electrodes which exhibit micro/nano-scale wrinkling and porosity were rapidly-prototyped. Probe density was shown to be tunable with these electrodes and densities were greater than planar electrodes due to a surface area enhancement. Such electrodes also demonstrated favorable characteristics for the electrocatalytic detection of DNA hybridization. Characterization of hybridization efficiency for DNA biosensors often require the determination of probe and target DNA densities in separate experiments, relying on averaged measurements which lose device specificity. A new method to quantify hybridization efficiency was developed which allows the label-free, sequential determination of probe DNA and target DNA density in one experiment, allowing electrode-specific characterization of hybridization efficiency. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Aus der Einleitung: "Im Tissue Engineering und in der Medizintechnik gewinnt das Rapid Prototyping (RP), das zu den additiven Fertigungsverfahren zählt, zunehmend an Bedeutung (Zhang, et al. 2015) (Li, et al. 2014). Für die Verarbeitung von thermoplastischen Biopolymeren ist das Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM, schematische Darstellung in Abbildung 1) von zentralem Stellenwert. ..."

Während in der industriellen Schuhherstellung viele Schritte im Fertigungsprozess des Produktes Schuh bereits computergestützt ablaufen, wird der Bereich des Schuhdesigns erst langsam durch neue Technologien unterstützt. Mehrere Herausforderungen ergeben sich durch diesen Schritt, deren Bewältigung auch einen wichtigen Beitrag im virtuellen Design anderer Produkte liefern kann. Dazu zählen Erkenntnisse in den Bereichen der individuell auf Maß gefertigten Produkte, der intuitiven Konstruktion der Produktbestandteile und der haptischen Interaktion mit den virtuellen Prototypen. Die vorliegende Arbeit soll einen detaillierten Einblick in die im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes "Dreidimensionales Stiefeldesign auf der Grundlage realer Beinmessdaten" bearbeiteten Themengebiete geben. Die wissenschaftliche Ausarbeitung wird zur weiteren Verwendung der Forschungsergebnisse durch einen realistischen technischen Detailgrad ergänzt.

This masters thesis deals with experimental biomechanical hand prosthesis designing and its realization in shape of prototype. Hand prosthesis sizing corresponds with adult man hand. Prosthesis functionality is selected with respect to search analysis results, to provide sufficient options to grip different objects. Hand design, including technical documentation, is completely made in Autodesk Inventor 2012. Main parts of prototype are made with using rapid - prototyping technologies. Used materials for parts made by this way are ABS plastics and plaster powder. Firgelli linear actuators (product line L) are used as drive for electrical controlled fingers. Prototype control is realized by PCI card and program, which has been written in LabView.

Published Article / RP and recently RM have been key factors in the development of the manufacturing industry in assisting in the development of new products. Fortunately, the application of these technologies has been realised in the medical industry. Surgeons all over the world use physical models created from CT or MRI data using some sort of additive manufacturing. The fabrication of these models has exploded into a popular research area combining engineering, material and medical expertise. Long-term growth in the additive fabrication industry will come from designs that are difficult, time-consuming, costly, or impossible to produce using standard techniques. Growth will occur with advances in current additive processes which are coupled with breakthroughs in new materials. The applications of RP and RM are as diverse as the medical issues that arise. RM of custom design medical prostheses proves to be economically viable solution, not only because it is faster to produce but it gives the designer freedom of creation too. The paper discusses some interesting medical case studies.

Published Article / Atkinson distinguishes between four types of prototypes, categorised through its end-use: •Design or aesthetic prototypes •Geometrical prototypes •Functional prototypes •Technological prototypes Shigley and Mitchell define the design process according to the following six phases: Recognition of need Definition of problem Synthesis Analysis and optimization Evaluation Presentation The Centre for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacture (CRPM) of the Central University of Technology, Free State was asked to assist in the development of a newly developed gynaecological cream applicator. Apart from needing a freeform fabrication system to give form fit and function to the very complex design, the product needed Rapid Tooling / Rapid Manufacturing support to enable a first batch production for medical trials and evaluation. The paper will describe the total product development process alongside prototype categories described by Atkinson and design phases defined by Shigley and Mitchell (including some iterations enabled through timeous prototyping, including various Rapid Prototyping (RP) Technologies, soft tooling and vacuum casting). More importantly, results from Rapid Tooling for limited run production (due to the complexity of the product the cycle time of the Prototype Tool is fairly long), as well as the economical impact made possible through the support of CAD / CAM and RP Technologies, will be discussed.