Summary

This concludes the chapter – I hope that your journey with additive manufacturing will be a source of new ideas and a starting point to discover different approaches to part design.

Let’s recap together what we discovered during this chapter. At first, we discussed what additive manufacturing is and how it is different from other legacy production processes. After this, we explained in which scenarios additive manufacturing should be considered a possible alternative to other technologies. Most notably, we found out why 3D printers are a valuable solution for prototypes and the advantage of additive flexibility in just-in-time supply chains.

In the final section, we analyzed one by one the most common printing technologies (FDM, SLS, and SLA), comparing their features and drawbacks. Understanding all these points is very important; sometimes, a designer is bound to old ideas or old shapes driven by legacy manufacturing techniques. Grasping the innovation...