Additive manufacturing. General principles

Since the early 1980s, the digital revolution has had a direct impact on our daily lives : increased globalisation of markets, fiercer competition requiring optimal reactivity from businesses, and an ability to adapt constantly to changing products and services.

This means that companies, if they are to hold onto and/or acquire new shares of the market, given the increasing rate of product replacement, must :

• control their costs ;

• constantly improve the quality of their products/services ;

• drastically reduce development and release to market times.

Companies, to meet these essential criteria for success, are constantly adapting to new external environments, and must include technologies fostered by the digital revolution into their design process (and organisation).

The first patent associated with Additive Manufacturing (AM) was applied for by Jean-Claude André’s team and triggered a revolution in the field of manufacturing processes and by extension in the field of production. Starting from a single manufacturer in 1986 (3D Systems), by 2015 there were around fifty machine manufacturers. Recently, there is a merge of companies counting to develop leading groups on the additive manufacturing marketplace.

AM currently affects all fields of industry, particularly the automotive, aerospace and medical industries.

Over the first years of AM (1990 to 2000), applications basically covered the earlier phases of product design : visual appearance models, breadboard models, technological prototypes, and also the exploration of so-call rapid tooling. It was only from the early 2010s that the processes were considered to have reached sufficient maturity to allow serial production of manufactured parts.

Having introduced the principles of AM, this article goes on to present the different stages from idea to product, then analyses the material/process/machinery triangle from the AM point of view. Finally, it provides a description of the changes required in association with this new technology, in terms of both design processes and the ecosystem into which AM is deployed.