Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference 2018

The customer benefit is a crutial parameter in order to get traditional manufactured parts to 3D metal printed ones. Value Engineering for 3D metal printing means to evaluate all parameters that influence the final product and its manufacturing process. Value is the ratio between customer benefit and fulfillment of functions compared to needed ressources like costs or other investments. The Value Engineering process is a guiding framework in order to get all information needed and knowledge about real barriers in requirements and those that are only traditionally existing. Breaking up the traditional barriers and reducing the requirements to the very little amount of must-be's, the value engineering process establishes grades of freedom how to make new design and engineered parts for additive manufacturing. This of course has to be carried out in an interdisciplinary approach in order to get all stakeholder requirements and then reinvent the part to be additive manufactured. Here M&H CNC will refer to the distribution cooperation with the company Altair and will give some insights. Additionally, the approaches of cost engineering have to be implemented as well as one lever for increasing the total value. Here value engineering for 3D printing provides guidance in calculation of total cost of ownership. A set of evaluation methods help to evaluate the cost reduction in addition to the functional improvement of the new part in order to get a fundamental decision whether a part is suitable for 3D metal printing respectively can be engineered for 3D printing or not. Finally, a set of good practices of design and engineering examples will proof the proper impact of the value engineering approach. here examples showing before and after situations will be brought. The conclusion will be the statement that value engineering is a must in order to do efficient design & engineering and that generate real 3D metal printing engineered parts.