No abstract

No abstract

predominantly in two ways: (1) material is removed from a stock, or (2) material is added to a part in progress that started out as a non-existent entity, e.g., an empty moving table or a box of powder with no part being solidified, depending on the type of manufacturing process being deployed. 3D printing is a technology that adds material to produce the part, and hence, it is also called additive manufacturing. Our notion of printing involves transferring ink to paper, line-by-line until the document is completed. Generalizing this process to 3D would involve transferring material to 3D space layer-by-layer till the object is completed. Since most of the 3D printers manufacture objects layer-by-layer, the term 3D printing struck.Since our 2D printers have become such common, and by-and-large, fairly reliable machines, this may create the impression that going from 2D to 3D is a straightforward task. The third dimension has always posed a challenge to mankind (according to surveys we performed, a significant percentage of people are 3D blind), so much so that we believe that 3D printing will be no exception. The ten challenges below illustrate the rocky road ahead and show that this technology may not be as disruptive, at least in the short term, as the media wants the public to believe. The list is by no means exhaustive and it represents our understanding of and opinion about the technology. We selected what we believed to be the most relevant papers for this review. Challenge 1: shape optimizationOptimization of the design space is made possible with additive manufacturing since the process has the ability to fill the interior part of the object in practically infinite ways. The design space is any area of the model that can be Abstract Three dimensional printing has gained considerable interest lately due to the proliferation of inexpensive devices as well as open source software that drive those devices. Public interest is often followed by media coverage that tends to sensationalize technology. Based on popular articles, the public may create the impression that 3D printing is the Holy Grail; we are going to print everything as one piece, traditional manufacturing is at the brink of collapse, and exotic applications, such as cloning a human body by 3D bio-printing, are just around the corner. The purpose of this paper is to paint a more realistic picture by identifying ten challenges that clearly illustrate the limitations of this technology, which makes it just as vulnerable as anything else that had been touted before as the next game changer.

No abstract

No abstract