TABLE OF CONTENTS There were no screws. It all went together with snap fits. We used high-speed movies to watch it come apart when we dropped it and kept refining the design until it just bounced.
Chief Engineer for Polaroid SX-70 Camera, 1972.
Word came down that we couldn t use screws. So we used snap fits. Then word came down that it had to pass a drop test. So we dropped it and it fell apart.
Desktop copier design engineer, 1991.
Design for assembly (DFA) is one of several DFx s, where each x is a characteristic of the product, its production, or its life cycle that is important to someone or in some context. In addition to DFA, there is design for manufacturing (DFM) as well as design for disassembly, repair, recycling, upgrade, and so on. Each DFx represents a body of knowledge, procedures, analyses, metrics, and design recommendations intended to improve the product in the domain x. These x s are sometimes called ilities. In this chapter we will look at DFA and some of the other DFx s, learn the basic principles behind them, and place them in the context of both assembly in the small and assembly in the large.
We will approach this topic by dividing the methods in use into two categories:
Methods or process steps that can be applied to one part at a time by an engineer working alone (which we will call DFx in the small)
Methods or process steps that involve consideration of all...
