Part Design

As the entry point for customers with specific Additive Manufacturing (AM) applications in mind, our Part Design Team offers comprehensive support across every stage of the design process. We provide expert consultancy on AM design and applications, helping customers identify the best strategies for their needs.

Our services include hands-on design workshops, guiding clients step-by-step toward a successfully manufactured part. Additionally, we offer a range of design services—from small adjustments for printability to complete redesigns and fully original part designs. This includes functional integration, advanced simulations, build job preparation and design automation.

For those exploring where to implement AM, we offer part screenings and part evaluations for individual components, as well as large-scale CAD database screenings in collaboration with our expert partners. Our goal is to help customers make informed decisions and maximize the benefits of Additive Manufacturing.

New Technologies 

At Fraunhofer IAPT, the Part Design Team is dedicated to advancing the field of additive manufacturing by exploring cutting-edge technologies across the entire process chain. Our work focuses on investigating process boundaries and technological limitations, enabling us to push beyond current capabilities.

By analyzing every aspect—from manufacturing to post-processing and part handling—we derive state-of-the-art design guidelines to enable a first-time right approach for the application of the end user. In parallel, we develop innovative design methodologies tailored to these emerging technologies, ensuring that our solutions stay at the forefront of industrial advancements.

Functional Optimization

Building on our insights into emerging technologies and our proprietary knowledge of design guidelines, we apply this extensive know-how to create highly efficient, optimized designs for Additive Manufacturing. Additive Manufacturing technologies enable us to create complex, integrated components, allowing us to explore and combine different optimization goals such as lightweighting, flow optimization, and optimal heat transfer within a single design.

Our approach not only enhances traditional design capabilities but also drives the development of innovative, integrable functions that push the boundaries of what is possible in modern design. By incorporating complex freeform designs, intricate latices or biomimetic design—drawing inspiration from biological principles found in nature—we translate these solutions into technical applications, further advancing the functional optimization of components for a wide range of industries.

Design Automation

In today's product development, components are often optimized based on individual technical criteria like mass or stiffness. However, this approach doesn't always ensure economic efficiency, as profitability depends on the three key factors: quality, time, and cost, with sustainability as an additional factor, which is becoming increasingly important. Manual optimization is common, making the process time-consuming and costly.

To address these challenges, Fraunhofer IAPT is developing advanced design automation workflows. Our solutions digitalize our extensive know-how in design guidelines for additive manufacturing, functional integration, and simulation, increasing the efficiency of product development processes and enabling quick design iterations. The digitized workflows can also be seen as a tool, enabling us to fulfill our core function as Fraunhofer, to ensure the efficient knowledge transfer from research to the industry. The fully automated workflows can for example be used to optimize components in terms of quality, time, cost, and sustainability, delivering an optimized part design ready for additive manufacturing. Furthermore, they can be seamlessly integrated into customer design processes, enabling users to create the most economical component for their application in the shortest possible time.