Additive Manufacturing Review: Early Past to Current Practice

TLDR

Additive manufacturing (AM) refers to processes that fabricate complex parts directly from computer models, and this review targets manufacturing professionals and researchers. The review aims to trace the early history of AM, highlight production‑quality processes, and examine the motivations behind its development during its nascent years. The authors survey the various AM process classes, their commercialization and application domains, and discuss design challenges and the current state of the art for polymer, metal, and ceramic production.

Abstract

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) is a set of manufacturing processes that are capable of producing complex parts directly from a computer model of the part. This review provides a history of the early antecedents of these processes. In addition, the different classes of AM processes and their commercialization are presented and discussed along with their fields of use. This paper emphasizes AM processes that produce production quality parts. The review also addresses design issues and the commercial state of the art for production of polymer, metal, and ceramic parts. A main emphasis of this paper is the development and motivations for AM especially during its nascent years. The paper is written for the general readership of manufacturing professionals and researchers.