Book excerpt: Design for Manufacturing assists anyone not familiar with various manufacturing processes in better visualizing and understanding the relationship between part design and the ease or difficulty of producing the part. Decisions made during the early conceptual stages of design have a great effect on subsequent stages. In fact, quite often more than 70% of the manufacturing cost of a product is determined at this conceptual stage, yet manufacturing is not involved. Through this book, designers will gain insight that will allow them to assess the impact of their proposed design on manufacturing difficulty. The vast majority of components found in commercial batch-manufactured products, such as appliances, computers and office automation equipment are either injection molded, stamped, die cast, or (occasionally) forged. This book emphasizes these particular, most commonly implemented processes. In addition to chapters on these processes, the book touches upon material process selection, general guidelines for determining whether several components should be combined into a single component or not, communications, the physical and mechanical properties of materials, tolerances, and inspection and quality control. In developing the DFM methods presented in this book, he has worked with over 30 firms specializing in injection molding, die-casting, forging and stamping. - Implements a philosophy which allows for easier and more economic production of designs - Educates designers about manufacturing - Emphasizes the four major manufacturing processes