Author : Diwakar Prasad

Who would have thought that modern manufacturing could be done without a factory? Since the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing has been synonymous with factories, machine tools, production lines and economies of scale. So it is startling to think about manufacturing without tooling, assembly lines or supply chains. There is a wide range of technologies accommodated under the umbrella of Additive Manufacturing, with varying potential, benefits, and disadvantages. Any analysis of the sector must differentiate between the kinds of technologies used and the value they can create. This paper aims to disaggregate the elements with an appreciation of the diverse benefits, challenges and areas of application that Additive Manufacturing methods present are also discussed.

Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, Rapid Prototyping, 3D-Printing, Stereolithography, Vat Photopolymarization, Polyjet, Binder Jetting, Fused deposition modeling, Powder bed fusion, Sheet lamination, Directed energy diposition

Article published in International Journal of Advance Industrial Engineering, Vol.3, No.3 (Sept-2015)