ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing has come a long way since its advent around three decades ago. From its initial applications in concept modeling and prototyping, these techniques are now being utilized for tooling; manufacturing; biomedical, retail, architectural, and artistic uses; construction; and so on apart from regular prototyping applications. AM emerged to complement rather than substitute for conventional manufacturing. Consistent efforts are in progress to utilize the best of both the robustness of conventional approaches and flexibility of AM approaches to extend applications to high-end sectors like space, aircraft, defense, tissue engineering, and so on. This chapter provides an overview of the historical development, timeline, prominent commercial processes, advantages, limitations, and applications of AM. It briefly discusses metal additive manufacturing techniques and their limitations. The chapter concludes with a discussion on probable solutions to these MAM limitations via solid-state friction-based additive manufacturing techniques.
