“Kant’s Great Service to Philosophy”

This chapter introduces the purposiveness theme from Kant’s Critique of Judgment. It argues that Kant’s innovation consists in the claim that purposiveness defines the space of judgment and that purposiveness plays a much larger role in Kant’s philosophy than is usually assumed. It begins by considering Kant’s theory of judgment in the first Critique, arguing that the problem of purposiveness is already present there in a nascent form. It then turns to the third Critique, arguing that internal purposiveness (an organic model) has priority over external purposiveness (a designer-artifact model) in connection with judgment’s powers, exploring Kant’s conception of internal purposiveness of form. The concept of a natural purpose (Naturzweck) is central for understanding Kant’s expanded understanding of conceptual form. The chapter also discusses Kant’s antinomy of teleological judgment and argues against the need for positing the idea of an intuitive understanding in the resolution of that antinomy. The chapter concludes by responding to an initial objection against Hegel’s claim that purposiveness is constitutive—namely, a worry about hylozoism.

Material Properties and Shrinkage of 3D Printing Parts using Ultrafuse Stainless Steel 316LX Filament

As a novel manufacturing methodology, 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) attracts much more attentions for complex structure fabrication, especially for manufacturing metal parts. A number of metal AM processes have been studied and commercialized. However, most of them are costly and less accessible. This paper introduces a material extrusion based 3D printing process for making austenitic stainless steel 316L part using a metal-polymer composite filament (Ultrafuse 316LX). The stainless steel 316L metal specimens are printed by a commonly used 3D printer loaded with Ultrafuse filament, followed by an industry standard debinding and sintering process. Tests are performed to understand the material properties, such as hardness, tensile strength, and microstructural characteristics, of the stainless steel 316L material. In addition, an artifact model is designed to estimate the part shrinkage after the debinding and sintering process. It is found that the stainless steel 316L part exhibits apparent shrinkage after sintering. But using the Ultrafuse filament for 3D printing could be an alternative way of making metal AM parts.

Set-Based Concurrent Engineering for Preserving Design Bandwidth in Product and Manufacturing System Platforms

Assembling products to order or applying straightforward configuration, such as scaling, allow the reuse of ready-designed physical components in high volumes. However, not all companies can exploit economies of scale in this way. They are burdened with additional design work, as requirements on functionality and performance differ among product variants or change over time. Such companies need artifact models and engineering processes that help them manage and develop for variety. Set-based concurrent engineering has been proposed for dealing with a variety of concepts during development that lead to a single product while storing knowledge gained. This paper adapts this thinking to the preparation and use of product and manufacturing system platforms. Here, the output is not a single product. Rather, a set of design solutions for products and manufacturing systems is designed that delivers flexibility in functionality and performance. In this paper, we call this built-in flexibility design bandwidth. The paper builds on an integrated artifact model for products and manufacturing systems. The model captures the rationale behind existing designs with their functionality. Here it is combined with principles of set-based concurrent engineering to outline a process for its preparation and use in cases of insufficient bandwidth that require additional designing. The preparation and use are illustrated by applying the model to an example where bandwidth is expanded and preserved.