2024-04-23 22:00:00
Building on the momentum of stereolithography, other additive manufacturing technologies appeared, at the same time as work continued to develop with several concerns present and committed to more prospective (and profitable) aspects:
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show that additive manufacturing is part of an industrial process making it possible to reduce the “ time-to-market » ;
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finding new outlets for technology: from children’s games to organ printing, from nanofabrication to construction, from sand to living matter;
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innovate to maintain momentum and endure: incremental approach to new processes and especially materials, meta and multimaterials;
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carry out proofs of concept and communicate; initial demonstrators develop in lightweight structures with modest investment, but with strong creativity;
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produce finished products in as few steps as possible.
These elements actually hide an essential guest: the material. The latter, taken at random, cannot normally lead to the creation of an object with a “typical” commercial 3D machine: there is in fact a specific or almost specific relationship with the process…
With the rapid development of additive manufacturing technologies, there has been a shift from prototyping to advanced manufacturing of functional components in industry. The intellectualization and industrialization of additive manufacturing processes and equipment might have constituted bottlenecks for industrial applications, but the generic process continues to develop (around 20% per year).
Materials, in different forms, play a key role in all additive manufacturing processes due to their intrinsic nature of the forms chosen and controllable performances. Metallic, polymer, ceramic and natural materials are thus used in different processes, either pure, or in the form of composites or alloys to obtain adapted/increased properties, or even lower costs relative to their current use. This diversity has given rise to a set of very varied materials that can be used in additive manufacturing.
On this basis, talking regarding “all-round” 3D materials is a great difficulty for a somewhat reasoned presentation. This is the reason chosen by the author to enter this article through a historical approach, the invention of stereolithography (light-matter interaction and spatially resolved polymerization) which focuses on a single family of materials ( polymerizable resins). Indeed, this initial knowledge has several advantages:
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it makes it possible to judge the attractiveness of the process with respect to industry;
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it defines a certain number of advantages (and limits) relative to (subtractive) manufacturing processes;
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it serves as a comparative benchmark for new additive manufacturing processes.
If methods for detecting a somewhat revolutionary innovation that stands out from previous industrial protections exist, they must already be known! Then, a specific set of skills is necessary, such as the ability to “translate” and establish bridges between R&D and applications to test the ability to transform discoveries into profitable products… Thus, the main thread of the article is builds on changes in the demand for technical progress (processes and materials) with other 3D breakthrough innovations with application pathways linked to these original process-material pairs.
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