Futureworks Incubator’s Design for Manufacturing Workshop at NYDesigns from SecondMuse on Vimeo.

Futureworks Incubator’s recent workshop at NYDesigns in Long Island City focused on designing for manufacturing. Led by Spencer Wright, AMINIMAL Studios’ John Briscella and Secco’s Erika Ostroff, facilitators chatted through DFM best practices, important software, resources and tips of the trade. Check out the video of the workshop above as well as important takeaways and links below.

A big thank you to our facilitators and to NYDesigns Director Tristan Bel for hosting and leading a post-event tour of the fablab. NYDesigns is a member of the Futureworks Shops network. Futureworks Incubator is an NYCEDC initiative that’s designed and run by collaboration agency SecondMuse. Sign up for future workshops here, and join Futureworks on Instagram and Twitter.

6 lessons on designing for manufacturing

1. Work with an industrial designer who can help you think through many different aspects of manufacturing including design from fabrication methods, manufacturing/assembly design modifications to save money and whether to use custom or off-the-shelf parts.
2. Keep your product design as simple as possible. The more parts you have, the more opportunities for manufacturing and supplier delays and an increase in assembly costs.
3. Deciding which type of manufacturing process you’ll want to use depends on the material (injection molding can only be done with plastic), cost and properties (watertight, shatter resistant?). Again, an industrial designer can help walk you through the options.
4. When working with industrial designers or manufacturing consultants, don’t just communicate when you need something. Invite them into your teams’ slack, frequent calls, emails, user testing and more. The more they know, and the better they can contextualize the product, the more helpful they’ll be.
5. When working with manufacturers, take pictures of the step-by-step assembly process you’ve gone through so that it saves them time (and you money) on the assembly line. Knowing how much time assembly takes will save you money.
6. Make sure you take binding materials like glue into account when you’re doing the finely-tuned measurements for your product. Glue can add many millimeters into the size of your product.  

FAVORITE RESOURCES
Designing for Manufacturing & Prototyping
Tulip software for syncing up with manufacturers, designers and managing workflow
Proto Labs for quick, cheap 3D printing, CNC machining and injection molding
Solidworks Simulation for testing how your parts will interact IRL
Autodesk’s Moldflow for plastic injection molding simulation to improve part and mold design
Shapeways for checking your molds
PCB:NG for on-demand PCB assembly
The Prepared newsletter by Spencer Wright