Design for Manufacturing (DFM)
What is Design for Manufacturing
Design for manufacturing and assembly (DfM or DfMA) is the engineering process, method and art of creating cost effective products, and products that are easy to manufacture in a reliable way.
The concept exists in almost all engineering disciplines, but the implementation differs widely depending on the manufacturing technology. DFM will allow potential problems to be fixed in the design phase which is the least expensive place to address them.
Depending on various types of manufacturing processes there are set guidelines for DFM practices. These DfM guidelines help to address all necessary aspects during the DfM process.
Changes identified early in the development of the product, might have major impact and cost less.
Design flaws that are identified at later stages, are very hard to implement and cost too much.
In injection molding, as molds are substantial investments, changes shall be identified before the beginning of their design and construction. During DfM it shall be thoroughly studied:
- Mold Steel Quality
- Mold and Slides Open Direction
- Parting Line Formation
- Subinserts
- Ejectors. Type and Position.
- Mold Weak Spots
- Flow Analysis
- Cooling Analysis
- Gates and Runner System
- Number of Cavities
- Quality of Part Surfaces
- Linear & Geometric Dimension Tolerancing
- Avoidance of injection molding faults (warpage, sink marks, weld lines etc.
Changes must be identified at the beginning of the development cycle.
: Impact of Change
: Cost of Change
| Design | Design | Build | Production | Launch |
| of Part | of Mold | of Mold | of Samples | of Production |