Evaluating the Timing of DfAM Interventions on Students' Early-Stage Designs for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) enables students to manufacture designs previously inconceivable with traditional processes and reduce unnecessary material usage. Design for AM (DfAM) education provides students with the mental tools to create suitable designs for AM through broad DfAM heuristics. Prior studies have made meaningful contributions to how we evaluate the overall effectiveness of DfAM education, but there are limitations that remain. There are unanswered questions regarding which specific heuristics should be emphasized to students through the equal balance of the capabilities (opportunistic DfAM (O-DfAM)) and limitations (restrictive DfAM (R-DfAM)) of AM. Additionally, the timing for when students should be provided with O-DfAM and R-DfAM heuristics to significantly improve the additive manufacturability of their early-stage designs needs to be understood. This current work addresses these needs by recruiting participants to complete a design challenge after being provided with DfAM intervention content. The timing of the DfAM intervention was varied within the engineering design process as students were randomly sorted into four groups: (1) O-DfAM and R-DfAM during the diverging stage of a design challenge, (2) O-DfAM and R-DfAM during the converging stage, (3) O-DfAM during the diverging stage and R-DfAM during the converging stage, and (4) R-DfAM during the diverging stage and O-DfAM during the converging stage. The results of this study found that students significantly improved the suitability of their early-stage designs for AM when provided with certain O-DfAM and R-DfAM heuristics at separate timepoints during the engineering design process. These significant findings highlight the intervention timing as a key component to consider when developing interventions to improve students' early-stage designs for AM.