Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 2017, 7, 291-318 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojapps ISSN Online: 2165-3925 ISSN Print: 2165-3917 DOI: 10.4236/ojapps.2017.76024 June 29, 2017 Design Consideration for Additive Manufacturing: Fused Deposition Modelling Ala’aldin Alafaghani, Ala Qattawi * , Muhammad Ali Ablat Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Merced, USA Abstract Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies have progressed in the past few years and many of them are now capable of producing functional parts in- stead of mere prototypes. AM provides a multitude of benefits, especially in design freedom. However, it still lacks industrial relevance because of the ab- sence of comprehensive design rules for AM. Although AM is usually adver- tised as being the solution for all traditional manufacturing design limitations, the fact is that AM only replaces these limitations with a different set of re- strictions. To fully exploit the advantages of AM, it is necessary to understand these limitations and consider them early during the design process. The es- tablishment of design considerations in AM enables parts and process opti- mization. This paper discusses the design considerations that will lead to op- timize part quality. Specifically, the work discusses the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) due to its common use and availability. These considera- tions are drawn from literature and from experiments done by the authors. The experiments done by the authors include an investigation for the influ- ence of elevated service temperature on the performance of FDM PLA parts, benchmarking the capability of FDM to print overhangs and bridges without supports, studying the influence of processing parameters over dimensional accuracy, and the effect of processing parameters on the final FDM samples modulus of elasticity. The work presents a case study investigating the correct clearances for FDM parts and finally a redesign for AM case study of a sup- port bracket originally manufactured using traditional manufacturing me- thods taking into consideration the design considerations discussed in this paper. Keywords Fused Deposition Modeling, Design for Manufacturing, Design for Additive Manufacturing, 3D Printing How to cite this paper: Alafaghani, A., Qattawi, A. and Ablat, M.A. (2017) Design Consideration for Additive Manufacturing: Fused Deposition Modelling. Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 7, 291-318. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojapps.2017.76024 Received: May 15, 2017 Accepted: June 26, 2017 Published: June 29, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access