Exponential growth in Internet applications and the need for a global access for future manufacturing demands web-based tools that operate seamlessly in heterogeneous environments. We present a Web-based Integrated Tool for Manufacturing that assists designers with a variety of CAD/CAM tools through a unified user interface. Web enabled system architecture is proposed for the future development of manufacturing tools. Design issues and research topics pertinent to this architecture are described. A prototype implementation based on this architecture and its current status is outlined. Finally, our research efforts in the development of this tool and some future research areas are identified.

3D printed electronics introduces new opportunities in product design. On the other side, it also brings challenges regarding many aspects in the design and manufacturing process of prototypes/products. In this paper, based on our preliminary investigations, we summarize the opportunities of using 3D printed electronics in product design as: 1) it offers designers more freedom in their designs; 2) it promotes miniaturization of design; 3) it accelerates the design and manufacturing process; 4) it is able to improve the efficiency of producing customized/personalized mechatronic/electronic products and 5) it improves the sustainability in the product design and manufacturing process. Motivated by those opportunities, we conducted four case studies regarding four key aspects of 3D printed electronics: the conductive materials, geometric modelling, multiphysics simulation and manufacturing tools. Based on the findings in those case studies, we identified the challenges in 3D printed electronics and highlight the future works which may provide a better support to the needs of product designers.

Designing for manufacturing encourages designers to tailor products for manufacturing constraints, assembly requirements, and limited resources. The additive manufacturing (AM) process challenges traditional manufacturing constraints by building material layer-by-layer, providing opportunities for increased complexity, mass customization, multifunctional embedding, and multi-material production, which were previously difficult with traditional manufacturing (TM) processes. With its application as an effective prototyping and manufacturing tool, AM is prevailing in the educational and industrial engineering design process. For proper utilization of the potential it offers, AM has created a need for an effective Designing for AM (DfAM) curriculum. This exploratory study examines how current formal education on DfAM considerations influence creative concept generation as compared to designing for TM (DfTM). A design study was conducted in two different classrooms, one with and one without formal training in DfAM. It was found that the ideas generated for AM on average were significantly more elegant than the ideas generated for TM. On the other hand, ideas generated for TM scored higher than AM in feasibility. These results indicate that AM significantly aids in generating aesthetically appealing ideas, but not necessarily in the generation of feasible ideas, compared to TM. We use these findings to provide recommendations for design education.

Soft material robots have gained interest in recent years due to the mechanical potential of non-rigid materials and technological development in the additive manufacturing (3D printing) techniques. The incorporation of soft materials provides robots with potential for locomotion in unstructured environments due to the conformability and deformability properties of the structure. Current additive manufacturing techniques allow multimaterial printing which can be utilized to build soft bodied robots with rigid-material inclusions/features in a single process, single batch (low manufacturing volumes) thus saving on both design prototype time and need for complex tools to allow multimaterial manufacturing. However, design and manufacturing of such deformable robots needs to be analyzed and formalized using state of the art tools. This work conceptualizes methodology for motor-tendon actuated soft-bodied robots capable of locomotion. The methodology relies on additive manufacturing as both a prototyping tool and a primary manufacturing tool and is categorized into body design & development, actuation and control design. This methodology is applied to design a soft caterpillar-like biomimetic robot with soft deformable body, motor-tendon actuators which utilizes finite contact points to effect locomotion. The versatility of additive manufacturing is evident in the complex designs that are possible when implementing unique actuation techniques contained in a soft body robot (Modulus discrepancy); For the given motor-tendon actuation, the hard tendons are embedded inside the soft material body which acts as both a structure and an actuator. Furthermore, the modular design of soft/hard component coupling is only possible due to this manufacturing technique and often eliminates the need for joining and fasteners. The multi-materials are also used effectively to manipulate friction by utilizing soft/hard material frictional interaction disparity.