Additive Manufacturing Technologies

Abstract

Thank you for taking the time to read this book on Additive Manufacturing (AM). We hope you benefit from the time and effort it has taken putting it together and that you think it was a worthwhile undertaking. It all started as a discussion at a conference in Portugal when we realized that we were putting together books with similar aims and objectives. Since we are friends as well as colleagues, it seemed sensible that we join forces rather than compete; sharing the load and playing to each other’s strengths undoubtedly means a better all-round effort and result. We wrote this book because we have all been working in the field of AM for many years. Although none of us like to be called “old,” we do seem to have 60 years of experience, collectively, and have each established reputations as educators and researchers in this field. We have each seen the technologies described in this book take shape and develop into serious commercial tools, with tens of thousands of users and many millions of parts being made by AM machines each year. AM is now being incorporated into curricula in many schools, polytechnics, and universities around the world. More and more students are becoming aware of these technologies and yet, as we saw it, there was no single text adequate for such curricula. We believe that the first edition of this book provided such a text, and based upon the updated information in this 2nd edition, we hope we’ve improved upon that start. Additive Manufacturing is defined by a range of technologies that are capable of translating virtual solid model data into physical models in a quick and easy process. The data are broken down into a series of 2D cross-sections of a finite thickness. These cross-sections are fed into AM machines so that they can be combined, adding them together in a layer-by-layer sequence to form the physical part. The geometry of the part is therefore clearly reproduced in the AM machine without having to adjust for manufacturing processes, like attention to tooling, undercuts, draft angles, or other features. We can say therefore that the AM machine is a What You See Is What You Build (WYSIWYB) process that is particularly valuable the more complex the geometry is. This basic principle drives nearly all AM machines, with variations in each technology in terms of the techniques used for creating layers and in bonding them together.