Proceedings of the Eigth International Conference on Axiomatic Design (ICAD 2014)

This work analyzes and compares traditional subtractive machining processes (milling and turning) and additive manufacturing processes (fused deposition modeling, selective sintering, stereolithography, and 3D printing) in an Axiomatic Design context. The processes are examined from a local and isothermal perspective then as time-varying systems to determine the degree of coupling and time-dependent complexity they exhibit. It is shown that subtractive processes exhibit more coupling within the design matrix than additive manufacturing processes. However, additive processes are intrinsically coupled at the voxel level and seem to exhibit more time-dependent complexity than their subtractive counterparts.