Additive Manufacturing (AM) has evolved from just manufacturing prototypes into a process that manufacture high quality end parts in just a few years. The implementation of AM has significantly affected the medical, aerospace, automotive and tooling design applications. Due to several reasons, the production of medical implants using AM is highly emerging. Most importantly because the manufacturing of prosthesis and implants are case by case dependent. AM gives the benefit for those medical parts to be tailored according to patient's requirements. As for aerospace and automotive, the main target is to improve efficiency by decreasing fuel consumption. The role of AM in this industry is to reduce production lead time, reduce operational cost and build parts that have light weight. It is important to present a SWOT analysis, describing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing AM. There is a need to highlight the necessity for a standard practice to develop the AM process in the Egyptian market. Future trends to overcome current barriers are discussed in this work, point pinning on the development direction. Despite all the challenges that still faces AM, it is definitely emerging and expected to develop even more and take the lead in manufacturing techniques in the near future.
Manufacture of a product in a desired shape and size with specific characteristics and properties depends not only on the design of the product but also on the selection of the appropriate manufacturing process(es) that requires knowledge about various available alternatives. This paper presents a software for selecting the optimal non-traditional machining process(es) from twenty one processes. It has been developed using MATLAB, version (V7.8) release (R2009a), as programming language with the help of graphical user interface (GUI), visual aids, and fuzzy logic toolboxes. The selection procedures are based on elimination and ranking technique, considering important attributes such as workpiece material and shape generation requirements, NTMPs operational capabilities, and NTMPs economical and environmental aspects. Cases of partial suitability of a particular process with respect to the operational requirements and providing unequal importance to them are considered, which increase the accuracy of the proposed software than previous works. An industrial case study, taken from Luxcelis Company, is implemented on the software for verification. Luxcelis Company uses laser machining system for the formation of cooling holes in high pressure turbine blades for aerospace turbine engines.
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