ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the advances, challenges, and ideas related to future manufacturing and processing technologies. The current market focus has been on wrist products, and they include fitness trackers, mobile hotspots, Apple Watch, and many others. The emergence of controlled subtractive and additive manufacturing processes is enabling unprecedented capabilities. Manufacturing and processing techniques are widely used to treat and fabricate parts, structures, and systems. Combining additive and subtractive steps in the manufacturing process offers the capability to make complex shape parts that consist of material hybrids. Adding materials to form structures by various techniques has become a standard manufacturing process, and one of the leading techniques is three-dimensional (3D) printing. New techniques in manufacturing and processing are emerging, allowing the production of hybrid and complex structures that not too long ago were considered impossible to make. One of the promising technologies that may benefit future fabrication process includes self-assembly, which resembles the formation of cells in biology.
