Conclusion

Recent advances in AM technologies confirm the sector’s dynamism. Advances in materials, manufacturing speeds, advanced design tools, and the integration of AI are now paving the way for applications that extend beyond the realm of prototyping alone. While industrial applications still primarily involve custom or high-value-added production, the increasing maturity of processes—particularly those involving metal and high-performance polymers—is facilitating the emergence of the first mass-production projects. Historical barriers related to machine costs, material qualification, and dimensional constraints remain, but rapid advances are being made: multi-laser architectures, hybrid processes, process simulation, closed-loop control, and post-processing automation. In addition to these limitations, there is a significant organizational hurdle: the still uneven mastery of DfAM, on which the...