Ryabov Roman Yurievich
Student, Southern Federal University, Taganrog
The article describes the impact of the additive manufacturing on the well-established design principles. The transition to the sixth technological order and the role of additive manufacturing in it are expounded. The educational issues for the new generation of designers and transformation of the disciplinary paradigm are considered.
It is generally accepted that the world passed five techno-economic paradigms and now the sixth is coming. Nowadays we are on the verge of yet another a scientific and technological revolution – the transition to the sixth technological order in which additive technologies play a key role. Additive technologies are a vivid example of how new developments significantly improve traditional production and provide competitive advantages of products that opens up new opportunities for various industries in the era of innovative economy. According to experts and engineers, additive technologies can increase productivity, raise the material utilization rate to 98% and significantly reduce (sometimes halve) the weight of manufactured structures that is extremely important for aircraft manufacturers.
The most important condition for the dynamic development of additive manufacturing is a radical restructuring of the organization and management of all parts of the scientific and production cycle. Adaptation to the sixth techno-economic paradigm implies the revision of business models and the concept of training, ranging from economists and managers to designers. Trying to optimize costs, businesses offer innovative production concepts. Designers depart from the usual principles of manufacturing involving the removal of material from the bulk and or using casting; instead they offer new, sometimes revolutionary methods – bionic constructions that are by two-thirds lighter than the extruded analogues or 3D-printing that requires far less raw material. As a result, the factory technological sector shrinks considerably. It does not require the time-consuming and expensive operations for the production of patterns and mock-up models, and compiling the long manufacturing procedure also becomes unnecessary. The technological process is reduced to a new manufacturing solution – “CAD-model – 3D-printer”. This approach to the organization of production processes allows to consider the product as a single complex system. The factory then acts as a single production complex providing the entire product life cycle (development, production, maintenance and recycling) in close cooperation with the customer’s organization.
However, the degree of complexity of the product design is limited by the capabilities of methods, technologies and technological equipment existing today. For example, when using additive technologies, a system of cavities of arbitrary forms in the body of a detail, which does not occur in case of application of subtractive manufacturing. Therefore, in the former instance it is necessary to use expensive blanking operations with the rather low technological reliability and with the high cost in flaws removal. However, since the additive manufacturing requires less material and labor costs are generally lower, the overall advantages of this technique are expected make large swathes of subtractive manufacturing obsolete and unnecessary.
In terms of manufacturing, the additive technologies allow to reduce defects and lower the weight of the produced part. The factory becomes more “independent” with the fully closed production loop.
The new production patterns and successful transition to the sixth technological order will only be possible with appropriately trained and highly qualified engineering and design staff. Therefore, it is necessary to nurture the new specialists fundamentally different from the previous generation of engineers.
Engineering education consistently makes it its goal to produce innovative, hands-on engineers who are familiar with the latest technologies and have the ability and skill to implement them in their work places. Additive manufacturing techniques continue to be a growing consideration and a necessary experience that students should incorporate into their problem-solving and design strategies. Universities and colleges change their curriculums accordingly, applying new modules and philosophy of engineering. The successes and challenges of implementing more thorough design activities, which would include student-printed and evaluated solutions, are being extensively discussed. This is resource-consuming and costly process. However, the efforts needed to incorporate the new techniques into students’ classrooms and labs will contribute greatly to engineering education as students with meaningful hands-on and design experiences, including the use of additive manufacturing, will be engaged and well prepared for the work place.
Additive technologies significantly affect the formation of new business models and change the concept of the structure of an industrial enterprise. They are closely associated with the advent of the sixth technological order, being one of its main constituent parts. The new order will not only change the traditional production concepts, but also entail significant socio-economic consequences including major changes in approaches to engineering education.
If this topic is interesting for you, I will advise you some authors:
1. Bandyopadhyay A., Bose S. Additive Manufacturing. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. — XII.
2. Dresvyannikov V.A., Strakhov E.P. Additive technologies as a technological innovation: concept, content, development analysis // Economics and management of innovative technologies. № 1. 2018.
3. David Ian Wimmpen., Pulak M. Pandey., L. Jyothish Kumar Advance in 3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing Technologies.