How to teach design for manufacturability at micro scale tasks
Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Schulze, Volker; Zanger, Frederik; Hoppen, Philipp
Series: E&PDE
Institution: wbk Institute of Production Science, Germany
Section: Best Practice in Design Education
Page(s): 058-063
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1
Abstract
Designing for manufacturability is a big challenge for every designer. Every manufacturing process has its characteristics and its limits. Costs and manufacturing time are often difficult to estimate, especially for engineers who do not cope with the daily problems of production processes. The relative tolerances are much higher when manufacturing on micro scale than on macroscopic scale and the production processes are generally less stable. An increasing number of products in different industries possess micro geometries and this trend will continue. Therefore the competence to design micro systems for manufacturability is getting more and more important for the next generation of designers. The wbk Institute of Production Science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is researching manufacturing processes on micro scale for more than 10 years. The institute is investigating processes such as micro milling, micro electric discharge machining, micro laser ablation and micro powder injection molding presently and will pursue this in future. Besides this research work the education of students in this field does have a high priority. Since about 10 years students are taught the basics of micro production processes and designing micro systems. Within the program of engineering studies a master course that comprises theory and application of micro systems is offered. This course consists of several lectures on the manufacturing processes at wbk and project work with one of the instituteâs industry partners. This assures that the students get acquainted with the present problems of manufacturing on micro systems in the industry. Furthermore they learn designing for manufacturability as it is required in real world manufacturing processes.
Keywords: Design for manufacturability, micro systems, project work, education, Q-model