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What is additive manufacturing?
Many traditional methods of manufacturing, like milling, lathing, or filling, could be rereferred to as subtractive manufacturing. They start with a larger piece of stock and then remove material until the final part is revealed. In contrast, additive manufacturing refers to techniques that add material to build a part one layer at a time.
Whether it's extruding filament through a nozzle, melting metal powder, or curing resin with UV light. Additive manufacturing covers many technologies that might not necessarily look alike, but they all create parts by adding material in layers.
Who can use this?
Additive manufacturing is not a drop-in replacement for any manufacturing process, but most organizations will most likely benefit from adding it to their workflow. Additive manufacturing is a large umbrella for processes, each providing specific strengths and weaknesses. Still, as a general rule of thumb, additive manufacturing is most useful for those who need the following.
- Parts with complex geometries: because of the way additive manufacturing builds can create parts that would either be expensive or impossible with traditional manufacturing techniques.
- In-house custom parts: additive manufacturing allows you to rapidly go from cad to fully realized parts. This will enable organizations to easily create iterative prototypes and small-scale manufacturing of custom parts for clients.
- Specific material properties: Because of the unique way that parts are formed, and the variety of materials available allows for control of various material properties such as strength, stiffness, and toughness. Materials and techniques also allow for more specific properties like food-safe, chemically resistant, UV reactive, etc.
What cant it do?
The main drawback of additive manufacturing is that it's not ideal for large-scale manufacturing. The extreme flexibility that additive manufacturing provides comes with the trade-off of each part taking more time and energy than other traditional manufacturing methods.
Useful terms
Subtypes
Given the vast number of printing technologies available it makes sense to have some sort of system to sort them by. The generally accepted system was created by(INSERT STANDARDS Organization) this systems sorts printers into seven categories based on how they physically print the material
- Material extrusion
- Powder Bed Fusion
- Vat Polymerization
- Binder Jetting
- Material Jetting
- Sheet Lamination
- Direct Energy Deposition