In relation to the fourth industrial revolution, traditional manufacturing methods cannot serve the flexibility demands related to mass customization and small series production. Rapid tooling provided by generative manufacturing has been suggested recently in the context of metal forming. Due to the high loads applied during processes to such tooling, a purposeful mechanical description of the additively manufactured (AM) materials is crucial. Until now, a comprehensive characterization approach for AM polymers is required to allow a sophisticated layout of rapid tooling. In detail, information on compressive and flexural mechanical properties of solid infilled materials made by additive manufacturing are sparsely available. These elementary mechanical properties are evaluated in the present study. They result from material specimens additively manufactured in the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process. The design of the experiments reveals significant influences of the polymer and the layer height on the resulting flexural and compressive strength and modulus as well as density, hardness, and surface roughness. As a case study, these findings are applied to a cup drawing operation based on the strongest and weakest material and parameter combination. The obtained data and results are intended to guide future applications of direct polymer additive tooling. The presented case study illustrates such an application and shows the range of manufacturing quality achievable within the materials and user settings for 3D printing.

Due to the change from mass production to mass personalized production and the resulting intrinsic product flexibility, the automotive industry, among others, is looking for cost-efficient and resource-saving production methods to combining global just-in-time production. In addition to geometric manufacturing flexibility, additive manufacturing offers a resource-saving application for rapid prototyping and small series in predevelopment. In this study, the FDM process is utilized to manufacture the tooling to draw a small series of sheet metal parts in combination with the rubber pad forming process. Therefore, a variety of common AM polymer materials (PETG, PLA, and ABS) is compared in compression tests, from which PLA is selected to be applied as sheet metal forming die. For the rubber pad forming process, relevant processing parameters, i.e., press force and rubber cushion hardness, are studied with respect to forming depth. The product batch is examined by optical evaluation using a metrological system. The scans of the tool and sheet metal parts confirm the mechanical integrity of the additively manufactured die from polymer and thus the suitability of this approach for small series in sheet metal drawing processes, e.g., for automotive applications.

Conventional, dies are manufactured subtractive for sheet metal forming. Beside the forming process, high tooling costs, material exertion and energy consumption, the die production offers chances for economic improvements. Especially, individualization and mass customization for small batch series require sustainable low-cost tooling approaches, where sustainable advances through biologicalization may offer new possibilities. In this work, sheet metal forming tools are manufactured by laminated black locust dies to reduce the overall ecological impact. The deformation and wearing behavior of the wooden tools is investigated during a drawing operation for low batch size of an automotive conventional sheet material.

In relation to the fourth industrial revolution, traditional manufacturing methods cannot serve the flexibility demands related to mass customization and small series production. Rapid tooling provided by generative manufacturing has been suggested recently in the context of metal forming. Due to the high loads applied during processes to such tooling, a purposeful mechanical description of the additively manufactured (AM) materials is crucial. Until now, a comprehensive characterization approach for AM polymers is required to allow a sophisticated layout of rapid tooling. In detail, information on compressive and flexural mechanical properties of solid infilled materials made by additive manufacturing are sparsely available. These elementary mechanical properties are evaluated in the present study. They result from material specimens, additively manufactured in the fused filament fabrication process. The design of experiments reveals significant influences of the polymer and the layer height on the resulting flexural and compressive strength and modulus as well as density, hardness, and surface roughness. As case study, these findings are applied to a cup drawing operation based on the strongest and weakest material and parameter combination. The obtained data and results are intended to guide future applications of direct polymer additive tooling. The presented case study illustrates such an application and shows the range of manufacturing quality achievable within the materials and user settings for 3D printing.

The mitigation of primary resource exploitation and their usage within linear economies ultimately leads to systematic leakages from economy and the depletion of natural resources. In contrast, a circular instead of a linear economy aims towards minimizing these leakages by reintroducing all resources to economy without negative externalities. Within the circular economy (CE), manufacturing plays a vital role for the conversion of resources towards products. For a manufacturing system, it is hence of critical importance to understand the implications and requirements of CE for production. The present study develops the Ready4CM “Ready For Circular Manufacturing” principle. Manufacturing systems are considered in the light of serving the needs of CE, where manufacturing flexibility, scalability and reconfigurability may pave the way but need to be controlled sufficiently to achieve resilience towards more drastic uncertainties of used materials. Not only focusing on process, but also on machine and tool, this paper contributes towards CE by identifying systematic aspects of circularity in manufacturing systems. We embedded our contribution in existing frameworks that calculate and balance sustainability potentials within circular economy while our approach, Ready4CM, aims to identify and summarize a comprehensive understanding of technical premises for manufacturing processes to serve and facilitate CE.