ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing (AM) is defined by ASTM as the “process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies, such as traditional machining.” (Nelson 2009)
AM has been actively utilized in the research of biomaterial processing and development of biomedical scaffolds or implants(Chua, Yeong et al. 2005, Chua, Sudarmadji et al. 2008, Syam, Mannan et al. 2011). In recent year, AM is moving into the domain of direct manufacturing motivated by the development of various engineering materials such as nylon, ABS; Titanium, Aluminium and stainless steel. Selective laser melting (SLM) of M2 high speed steel (Liu, Chua et al. 2012) has also been demonstrated. The main advantages of additive manufacturing are the abilities to manufacture highly complex parts with short lead time, allows mass customization and removing the need of tooling, thus speeding up the process of product time to market. The technology is especially valuable to the medical industry where high mix low volume product is required such as medical devices (Boland, Ovsianikov et al. 2007).
