Review on Additive Manufacturing of Multi-Material Parts: Progress and Challenges

TLDR

Additive manufacturing is a highly versatile technique with the potential to transform conventional manufacturing. The paper reviews the latest progress and challenges in fabricating multi‑material parts with additive manufacturing technologies. The authors surveyed the manufacturing processes and materials used for functional components, summarized them, and examined current challenges to forecast future directions of multi‑material additive manufacturing. The review highlights recent applications of multi‑material additive manufacturing in automotive, aerospace, biomedical, and dentistry, and concludes that further research is required on interface design, manufacturing processes, and material compatibility.

Abstract

Additive manufacturing has already been established as a highly versatile manufacturing technique with demonstrated potential to completely transform conventional manufacturing in the future. The objective of this paper is to review the latest progress and challenges associated with the fabrication of multi-material parts using additive manufacturing technologies. Various manufacturing processes and materials used to produce functional components were investigated and summarized. The latest applications of multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM) in the automotive, aerospace, biomedical and dentistry fields were demonstrated. An investigation on the current challenges was also carried out to predict the future direction of MMAM processes. It was concluded that further research and development is needed in the design of multi-material interfaces, manufacturing processes and the material compatibility of MMAM parts.