Design for 3D printing - Design with the process in mind
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Get your components designed correctly for 3D printing – and avoid costly errors, waste, and unnecessary limitations.
A component that works in traditional manufacturing is rarely optimal for 3D printing. Without adaptation to the specific printing process, you risk misprints, poor surface quality, unnecessary material consumption, and components that do not live up to mechanical requirements. At the same time, many companies miss out on the design opportunities that additive manufacturing opens up – such as complex geometries, functional integration, and weight reduction.
Danish Technological Institute offers design consultancy and design optimization for 3D printing. We help you adapt your design to the chosen process – or create it completely from scratch – so you get components that print correctly, perform better, and utilize the full potential of the technology.
How can Danish Technological Institute help you?
- Design adaptation for the printing process: Adaptation of your existing design to match the chosen 3D printing technology's requirements for geometry, support structures, tolerances, and build orientation
- Topology optimization: Optimization of component geometry for weight reduction, material reduction, or improved strength – without compromising functional requirements
- Functional integration: Redesign that consolidates multiple components into a single part and reduces assembly, joints, and sources of error
- Lattice and grid structures: Design of internal structures that provide better strength-to-weight ratios or customized mechanical properties
- Orientation and support strategy: Advice on optimal build orientation and support structure to minimize post-processing and material consumption
- Digital simulation: Simulation of the printing process to predict deformations, stresses, and potential errors before physical printing takes place
- Material-specific design consultancy: Adaptation of design to the chosen material, whether it is polymer, metal, or composite
Why is design for 3D printing a standalone discipline?
Just like conventional manufacturing techniques – such as casting, forging, or machining – additive processes are subject to physical constraints. Based on these constraints, design guidelines and principles can be derived.
Since the design principles for traditional manufacturing methods are vastly different from those in 3D printing, designers and engineers often find it difficult to free themselves from these constraints and instead "think in 3D".
Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is an approach where the component is designed with the specific printing process in mind. In contrast to traditional design, DfAM is not about adhering to limitations – but about exploiting the degrees of freedom that additive manufacturing provides.
Without a DfAM approach, problems typically arise such as:
- Components requiring unnecessarily large amounts of support material and post-processing
- Designs that do not account for process-specific limitations such as minimum wall thickness, overhangs, and shrinkage
- Failure to utilize opportunities for weight reduction, consolidation, and functional integration
The impact of good design practice
DfAM is most often associated with ensuring manufacturability. However, the implications of a good design extend far beyond the question of whether a print is completed successfully or not. In fact, the technological and economic viability of entire business concepts can depend on component geometry.
Well-designed components take the entire manufacturing chain into account – this includes nesting parts within the available build volume, ease of post-processing, and final assembly. In many cases, even minor changes to geometry can result in significantly reduced lead times and lower overall manufacturing costs.
Should we help optimize your design for 3D printing?
Contact Danish Technological Institute's 3D printing specialist, Simon Brudler, PhD, for a chat about your component and application – together we will assess how the design can be adapted to deliver the best result.