Design for metal powder bed fusion: The geometry for additive part selection (GAPS) worksheet

In industry, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is currently synonymous with expert knowledge and external consultants for many companies. Particularly in higher cost technologies, such as metal powder bed fusion, component design requires extensive additive manufacturing (AM) knowledge. If a part is improperly designed, then it can cause thousands of dollars of lost time and material through a failed print. To avoid this situation, specialists must be consulted throughout the printing process; however, the shortage of trained personnel familiar with AM can create a bottleneck during design. In order to help businesses identify candidate parts for Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) AM, this paper presents a DfAM worksheet to help engineers, drafters, and designers select good part candidates with little prior knowledge of the specific technology. This worksheet uses data from the literature to support the values used for design guidance. Example components are shown to demonstrate the worksheet process. Ratings of these components are then compared with expert raters’ assessments of their suitability for fabrication with PBF from a geometric standpoint. In addition to introducing the worksheet, preliminary user feedback about the worksheet is presented, and future work is discussed.