INVESTIGATING THE USE OF AUGMENTED REALITY IN THE DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has a great potential of disrupting product design and supply chains in many industries by means of its unique capabilities when compared to traditional manufacturing. A wide range of designers would like to take advantage of AM to improve their designs, but they need assistance in learning and breaking out of their conventional manufacturing mindset in the early phases of the design process. Therefore, this study explores the role of Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool for visualization of 3D models to be printed using AM. Specifically, it aims to enhance the learning experience of the existing Design Heuristics for Additive Manufacturing using Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) cards which are focused on transferring early design phase-relevant AM-process independent knowledge and capabilities to both novice and experienced designers. In this study, we propose a modification of DfAM cards to include AR markers into the existing card design and hence provide a comprehensive visualization along with the information about heuristics and examples on the DfAM cards. This helps the user to understand the real-world structure of the final printed product before it is being printed. The cross-platform game engine Unity is used for developing the AR models for this research. We also investigate the advantages that Augmented Reality can provide as a visual interface. An expert review is conducted to obtain feedbacks on the developed application and the new design of the cards.