Additive manufacturing

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control, with the material being added together (such as plastics, liquids or powder grains being fused), typically layer by layer.

In the 1980s, 3D printing techniques were considered suitable only for the production of functional or aesthetic prototypes, and a more appropriate term for it at the time was rapid prototyping. , the precision, repeatability, and material range of 3D printing have increased to the point that some 3D printing processes are considered viable as an industrial-production technology; in this context, the term ''additive manufacturing'' can be used synonymously with ''3D printing''. One of the key advantages of 3D printing is the ability to produce very complex shapes or geometries that would be otherwise infeasible to construct by hand, including hollow parts or parts with internal truss structures to reduce weight while creating less material waste. Fused deposition modeling (FDM), which uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material, is the most common 3D printing process in use .

Terminology

The umbrella term ''additive manufacturing (AM)'' gained popularity in the 2000s, inspired by the theme of material being added together ( in any of various ways). In contrast, the term ''subtractive manufacturing'' appeared as a retronym for the large family of machining processes with material ''removal'' as their common process. The term ''3D printing'' still referred only to the polymer technologies in most minds, and the term ''AM'' was more likely to be used in metalworking and end-use part production contexts than among polymer, inkjet, or stereolithography enthusiasts.

By the early 2010s, the terms ''3D printing'' and ''additive manufacturing'' evolved senses in which they were alternate umbrella terms for additive technologies, one being used in popular language by consumer-maker communities and the media, and the other used more formally by industrial end-use part producers, machine manufacturers, and global technical standards organizations. Until recently, the term ''3D printing'' has been associated with machines low in price or capability. ''3D printing'' and ''additive manufacturing'' reflect that the technologies share the theme of material addition or joining throughout a 3D work envelope under automated control. Peter Zelinski, the editor-in-chief of ''Additive Manufacturing'' magazine, pointed out in 2017 that the terms are still often synonymous in casual usage, but some manufacturing industry experts are trying to make a distinction whereby additive manufacturing comprises 3D printing plus other technologies or other aspects of a manufacturing process.

Other terms that have been used as synonyms or hypernyms have included ''desktop manufacturing'', ''rapid manufacturing'' (as the logical production-level successor to ''rapid prototyping''), and ''on-demand manufacturing'' (which echoes '' on-demand printing'' in the 2D sense of ''printing''). The fact that the application of the adjectives ''rapid'' and ''on-demand'' to the noun ''manufacturing'' was novel in the 2000s reveals the long-prevailing mental model of the previous industrial era during which almost all production manufacturing had involved long lead times for laborious tooling development. Today, the term ''subtractive'' has not replaced the term ''machining'', instead complementing it when a term that covers any removal method is needed. Agile tooling is the use of modular means to design tooling that is produced by additive manufacturing or 3D printing methods to enable quick prototyping and responses to tooling and fixture needs. Agile tooling uses a cost-effective and high-quality method to quickly respond to customer and market needs, and it can be used in hydroforming, stamping, injection molding and other manufacturing processes.

History

1940s and 1950s

The general concept of and procedure to be used in 3D-printing was first described by Murray Leinster in his 1945 short story "Things Pass By": "But this constructor is both efficient and flexible. I feed magnetronic plastics — the stuff they make houses and ships of nowadays — into this moving arm. It makes drawings in the air following drawings it scans with photo-cells. But plastic comes out of the end of the drawing arm and hardens as it comes ... following drawings only"

It was also described by Raymond F. Jones in his story, "Tools of the Trade", published in the November 1950 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'' magazine. He referred to it as a "molecular spray" in that story.

1970s

In 1971, Johannes F Gottwald patented the Liquid Metal Recorder, U.S. patent 3596285A, a continuous inkjet metal material device to form a removable metal fabrication on a reusable surface for immediate use or salvaged for printing again by remelting. This appears to be the first patent describing 3D printing with rapid prototyping and controlled on-demand manufacturing of patterns.

The patent states:

In 1974, David E. H. Jones laid out the concept of 3D printing in his regular column ''Ariadne'' in the journal ''New Scientist''.

1980s

Early additive manufacturing equipment and materials were developed in the 1980s.

In April 1980, Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute invented two additive methods for fabricating three-dimensional plastic models with photo-hardening thermoset polymer, where the UV exposure area is controlled by a mask pattern or a scanning fiber transmitter.
He filed a patent for this XYZ plotter, which was published on 10 November 1981. (JP S56-144478).
His research results as journal papers were published in April and November 1981.
However, there was no reaction to the series of his publications. His device was not highly evaluated in the laboratory and his boss did not show any interest. His research budget was just 60,000 yen or $545 a year. Acquiring the patent rights for the XYZ plotter was abandoned, and the project was terminated.

A US 4323756 patent, ''method of fabricating articles by sequential deposition'', granted on 6 April 1982 to Raytheon Technologies Corp describes using hundreds or thousands of "layers" of powdered metal and a laser energy source and represents an early reference to forming "layers" and the fabrication of articles on a substrate.

On 2 July 1984, American entrepreneur Bill Masters filed a patent for his computer automated manufacturing process and system
US 4665492
. This filing is on record at the USPTO as the first 3D printing patent in history; it was the first of three patents belonging to Masters that laid the foundation for the 3D printing systems used today.

On 16 July 1984, Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte, and Jean Claude André filed their patent for the stereolithography process. The application of the French inventors was abandoned by the French General Electric Company (now Alcatel-Alsthom) and CILAS (The Laser Consortium). The claimed reason was "for lack of business perspective".

In 1983, Robert Howard started R.H. Research, later named Howtek, Inc. in Feb 1984 to develop a color inkjet 2D printer, Pixelmaster, commercialized in 1986, using Thermoplastic (hot-melt) plastic ink. A team was put together, 6 members from Exxon Office Systems, Danbury Systems Division, an inkjet printer startup and some members of Howtek, Inc group who became popular figures in the 3D printing industry. One Howtek member, Richard Helinski (patent US5136515A, Method and Means for constructing three-dimensional articles by particle deposition, application 11/07/1989 granted 8/04/1992) formed a New Hampshire company C.A.D-Cast, Inc, name later changed to Visual Impact Corporation (VIC) on 8/22/1991. A prototype of the VIC 3D printer for this company is available with a video presentation showing a 3D model printed with a single nozzle inkjet. Another employee Herbert Menhennett formed a New Hampshire company HM Research in 1991 and introduced the Howtek, Inc, inkjet technology and thermoplastic materials to Royden Sanders of SDI and Bill Masters of Ballistic Particle Manufacturing (BPM) where he worked for a number of years. Both BPM 3D printers and SPI 3D printers use Howtek, Inc style Inkjets and Howtek, Inc style materials. Royden Sanders licensed the Helinksi patent prior to manufacturing the Modelmaker 6 Pro at Sanders prototype, Inc (SPI) in 1993. James K. McMahon who was hired by Howtek, Inc to help develop the inkjet, later worked at Sanders Prototype and now operates Layer Grown Model Technology, a 3D service provider specializing in Howtek single nozzle inkjet and SDI printer support. James K. McMahon worked with Steven Zoltan, 1972 drop-on-demand inkjet inventor, at Exxon and has a patent in 1978 that expanded the understanding of the single nozzle design inkjets (Alpha jets) and helped perfect the Howtek, Inc hot-melt inkjets. This Howtek hot-melt thermoplastic technology is popular with metal investment casting, especially in the 3D printing jewelry industry. Sanders (SDI) first Modelmaker 6Pro customer was Hitchner Corporations, Metal Casting Technology, Inc in Milford, NH a mile from the SDI facility in late 1993–1995 casting golf clubs and auto engine parts.

On 8 August 1984 a patent, US4575330, assigned to UVP, Inc., later assigned to Chuck Hull of 3D Systems Corporation was filed, his own patent for a stereolithography fabrication system, in which individual laminae or layers are added by curing photopolymers with impinging radiation, particle bombardment, chemical reaction or just ultraviolet light lasers. Hull defined the process as a "system for generating three-dimensional objects by creating a cross-sectional pattern of the object to be formed". Hull's contribution was the STL (Stereolithography) file format and the digital slicing and infill strategies common to many processes today. In 1986, Charles "Chuck" Hull was granted a patent for this system, and his company, 3D Systems Corporation was formed and it released the first commercial 3D printer, the SLA-1, later in 1987 or 1988.

The technology used by most 3D printers to date—especially hobbyist and consumer-oriented models—is fused deposition modeling, a special application of plastic extrusion, developed in 1988 by S. Scott Crump and commercialized by his company Stratasys, which marketed its first FDM machine in 1992.

Owning a 3D printer in the 1980s cost upwards of $300,000 ($650,000 in 2016 dollars).

1990s

AM processes for metal sintering or melting (such as selective laser sintering, direct metal laser sintering, and selective laser melting) usually went by their own individual names in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, all metalworking was done by processes that are now called non-additive (casting, fabrication, stamping, and machining); although plenty of automation was applied to those technologies (such as by robot welding and CNC), the idea of a tool or head moving through a 3D work envelope transforming a mass of raw material into a desired shape with a toolpath was associated in metalworking only with processes that removed metal (rather than adding it), such as CNC milling, CNC EDM, and many others. However, the automated techniques that ''added'' metal, which would later be called additive manufacturing, were beginning to challenge that assumption. By the mid-1990s, new techniques for material deposition were developed at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University, including microcasting and sprayed materials. Sacrificial and support materials had also become more common, enabling new object geometries.

The term ''3D printing'' originally referred to a powder bed process employing standard and custom inkjet print heads, developed at MIT by Emanuel Sachs in 1993 and commercialized by Soligen Technologies, Extrude Hone Corporation, and Z Corporation.

The year 1993 also saw the start of an inkjet 3D printer company initially named Sanders Prototype, Inc and later named Solidscape, introducing a high-precision polymer jet fabrication system with soluble support structures, (categorized as a "dot-on-dot" technique).

In 1995 the Fraunhofer Society developed the selective laser melting process.

2000s

In the early 2000s 3D printers were still largely being used just in the manufacturing and research industries, as the technology was still relatively young and was too expensive for most consumers to be able to get their hands on. The 2000s was when larger scale use of the technology began being seen in industry, most often in the architecture and medical industries, though it was typically used for low accuracy modeling and testing, rather than the production of common manufactured goods or heavy prototyping.

In 2005 users began to design and distribute plans for 3D printers that could print around 70% of their own parts, the original plans of which were designed by Adrian Bowyer at the University of Bath in 2004, with the name of the project being RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper).

Similarly, in 2006 the Fab@Home project was started by Evan Malone and Hod Lipson, another project whose purpose was to design a low-cost and open source fabrication system that users could develop on their own and post feedback on, making the project very collaborative.

Much of the software for 3D printing available to the public at the time was open source, and as such was quickly distributed and improved upon by many individual users. In 2009 the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printing process patents expired. This opened the door to a new wave of startup companies, many of which were established by major contributors of these open source initiatives, with the goal of many of them being to start developing commercial FDM 3D printers that were more accessible to the general public.

2010s

As the various additive processes matured, it became clear that soon metal removal would no longer be the only metalworking process done through a tool or head moving through a 3D work envelope, transforming a mass of raw material into a desired shape layer by layer. The 2010s were the first decade in which metal end-use parts such as engine brackets and large nuts would be grown (either before or instead of machining) in job production rather than obligately being machined from bar stock or plate. It is still the case that casting, fabrication, stamping, and machining are more prevalent than additive manufacturing in metalworking, but AM is now beginning to make significant inroads, and with the advantages of design for additive manufacturing, it is clear to engineers that much more is to come.

One place that AM is making a significant inroad is in the aviation industry. With nearly 3.8 billion air travelers in 2016, the demand for fuel efficient and easily produced jet engines has never been higher. For large OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like Pratt and Whitney (PW) and General Electric (GE) this means looking towards AM as a way to reduce cost, reduce the number of nonconforming parts, reduce weight in the engines to increase fuel efficiency and find new, highly complex shapes that would not be feasible with the antiquated manufacturing methods. One example of AM integration with aerospace was in 2016 when Airbus delivered the first of GE's LEAP engines. This engine has integrated 3D-printed fuel nozzles, reducing parts from 20 to 1, a 25% weight reduction, and reduced assembly times. A fuel nozzle is the perfect inroad for additive manufacturing in a jet engine since it allows for optimized design of the complex internals and it is a low-stress, non-rotating part. Similarly, in 2015, PW delivered their first AM parts in the PurePower PW1500G to Bombardier. Sticking to low-stress, non-rotating parts, PW selected the compressor stators and synch ring brackets to roll out this new manufacturing technology for the first time. While AM is still playing a small role in the total number of parts in the jet engine manufacturing process, the return on investment can already be seen by the reduction in parts, the rapid production capabilities and the "optimized design in terms of performance and cost".

As technology matured, several authors began to speculate that 3D printing could aid in sustainable development in the developing world.

In 2012, Filabot developed a system for closing the loop with plastic and allows for any FDM or FFF 3D printer to be able to print with a wider range of plastics.

In 2014, Benjamin S. Cook and Manos M. Tentzeris demonstrated the first multi-material, vertically integrated printed electronics additive manufacturing platform (VIPRE) which enabled 3D printing of functional electronics operating up to 40 GHz.

As the price of printers started to drop people interested in this technology had more access and freedom to make what they wanted. As of 2014, the price for commercial printers was still high with the cost being over $2,000.

The term "3D printing" originally referred to a process that deposits a binder material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads layer by layer. More recently, the popular vernacular has started using the term to encompass a wider variety of additive-manufacturing techniques such as electron-beam additive manufacturing and selective laser melting. The United States and global technical standards use the official term ''additive manufacturing'' for this broader sense.

The most commonly used 3D printing process (46% ) is a material extrusion technique called fused deposition modeling, or FDM. While FDM technology was invented after the other two most popular technologies, stereolithography (SLA) and selective laser sintering (SLS), FDM is typically the most inexpensive of the three by a large margin, which lends to the popularity of the process.

2020s

As of 2020, 3D printers have reached the level of quality and price that allows most people to enter the world of 3D printing. In 2020 decent quality printers can be found for less than US$200 for entry-level machines. These more affordable printers are usually fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers.

In November 2021 a British patient named Steve Verze received the world's first fully 3D-printed prosthetic eye from the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

In April 2024, the world's largest 3D printer, the Factory of the Future 1.0 was revealed at the University of Maine. It is able to make objects 96 feet long, or 29 meters.

In 2024, researchers used machine learning to improve the construction of synthetic bone and set a record for shock absorption.

In July 2024, researchers published a paper in ''Advanced Materials Technologies'' describing the development of artificial blood vessels using 3D-printing technology, which are as strong and durable as natural blood vessels. The process involved using a rotating spindle integrated into a 3D printer to create grafts from a water-based gel, which were then coated in biodegradable polyester molecules.

Benefits of 3D printing

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing has rapidly gained importance in the field of engineering due to its many benefits. The vision of 3D printing is design freedom, individualization, decentralization and executing processes that were previously impossible through alternative methods. Some of these benefits include enabling faster prototyping, reducing manufacturing costs, increasing product customization, and improving product quality.

Furthermore, the capabilities of 3D printing have extended beyond traditional manufacturing, like lightweight construction, or repair and maintenance with applications in prosthetics, bioprinting, food industry, rocket building, design and art and renewable energy systems. 3D printing technology can be used to produce battery energy storage systems, which are essential for sustainable energy generation and distribution.

Another benefit of 3D printing is the technology's ability to produce complex geometries with high precision and accuracy. This is particularly relevant in the field of microwave engineering, where 3D printing can be used to produce components with unique properties that are difficult to achieve using traditional manufacturing methods.

Additive Manufacturing processes generate minimal waste by adding material only where needed, unlike traditional methods that cut away excess material. This reduces both material costs and environmental impact. This reduction in waste also lowers energy consumption for material production and disposal, contributing to a smaller carbon footprint.

General principles

Modeling

3D printable models may be created with a computer-aided design (CAD) package, via a 3D scanner, or by a plain digital camera and photogrammetry software. 3D printed models created with CAD result in relatively fewer errors than other methods. Errors in 3D printable models can be identified and corrected before printing. The manual modeling process of preparing geometric data for 3D computer graphics is similar to plastic arts such as sculpting. 3D scanning is a process of collecting digital data on the shape and appearance of a real object, and creating a digital model based on it.

CAD models can be saved in the stereolithography file format (STL), a de facto CAD file format for additive manufacturing that stores data based on triangulations of the surface of CAD models. STL is not tailored for additive manufacturing because it generates large file sizes of topology-optimized parts and lattice structures due to the large number of surfaces involved. A newer CAD file format, the additive manufacturing file format (AMF), was introduced in 2011 to solve this problem. It stores information using curved triangulations.

Printing

Before printing a 3D model from an STL file, it must first be examined for errors. Most CAD applications produce errors in output STL files, of the following types:
* holes
* faces normals
* self-intersections
* noise shells
* manifold errors
* overhang issues

A step in the STL generation known as "repair" fixes such problems in the original model. Generally, STLs that have been produced from a model obtained through 3D scanning often have more of these errors as 3D scanning is often achieved by point to point acquisition/mapping. 3D reconstruction often includes errors.

Once completed, the STL file needs to be processed by a piece of software called a " slicer", which converts the model into a series of thin layers and produces a G-code file containing instructions tailored to a specific type of 3D printer ( FDM printers). This G-code file can then be printed with 3D printing client software (which loads the G-code and uses it to instruct the 3D printer during the 3D printing process).

Printer resolution describes layer thickness and X–Y resolution in dots per inch (dpi) or micrometers (μm). Typical layer thickness is around , although some machines can print layers as thin as . X–Y resolution is comparable to that of laser printers. The particles (3D dots) are around in diameter. For that printer resolution, specifying a mesh resolution of and a chord length generates an optimal STL output file for a given model input file. Specifying higher resolution results in larger files without increase in print quality.

Construction of a model with contemporary methods can take anywhere from several hours to several days, depending on the method used and the size and complexity of the model. Additive systems can typically reduce this time to a few hours, although it varies widely depending on the type of machine used and the size and number of models being produced simultaneously.

Finishing

Though the printer-produced resolution and surface finish are sufficient for some applications, post-processing and finishing methods allow for benefits such as greater dimensional accuracy, smoother surfaces, and other modifications such as coloration.

The surface finish of a 3D-printed part can improved using subtractive methods such as sanding and bead blasting. When smoothing parts that require dimensional accuracy, it is important to take into account the volume of the material being removed.

Some printable polymers, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), allow the surface finish to be smoothed and improved using chemical vapor processes based on acetone or similar solvents.

Some additive manufacturing techniques can benefit from annealing as a post-processing step. Annealing a 3D-printed part allows for better internal layer bonding due to recrystallization of the part. It allows for an increase in mechanical properties, some of which are fracture toughness, flexural strength, impact resistance

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