3. Additive manufacturing of architectured materials

Once the optimized architecture has been designed virtually, the challenge is to manufacture it physically, to the required quality. Additive manufacturing [BM 7 017] is particularly well-suited to the production of architectured materials, as it enables complex internal structures to be built layer by layer, without the need for specific tooling for each geometry. There are, however, a number of different manufacturing technologies, each with its own principles, advantages, limitations and impact on the quality achieved.