Additive Manufacturing Tutorial

Additive manufacturing is the formalized term for what used to be called rapid prototyping and what is popularly called 3D Printing. The term rapid prototyping (RP) is used in a variety of industries to describe a process for rapidly creating a system or part representation before final release or commercialization. In other words, the emphasis is on creating something quickly and that the output is a prototype or basis model from which further models and eventually the final product will be derived.

Rapid prototyping is also referred to as iterative software development, which enables clients and other stakeholders to test ideas and provide feedback during the development process. Consultants and engineers use this term to describe a method for developing software and business solutions in a piecemeal way. In a product development context, the term rapid prototyping was used widely to describe technologies that created physical prototypes directly from digital model data. This text is about these latter technologies, first developed for prototyping, but now used for many more purposes. Many users of RP technology have come to realize that this term is inadequate and, particularly, does not adequately describe more recent applications of the technology. Improvements in the quality of the output from these machines have meant that there is often a much closer link to the final product. It is not possible to call these parts prototypes, since many parts are now manufactured directly in these machines.

Furthermore, the term rapid prototyping overlooks the basic premise of these technologies as they fabricate parts through additive methods.

Additive Manufacturing Tutorial

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