Additive manufacturing SWOT analysis for metallic applications

Abstract

Since the development of rapid prototyping in the late 1980s, the manufacturing industry has seen the growth in manufacturing technologies using Computer Aided Design Software (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing Software (CAM). In the last three decades, such machines and technologies have progressed from being limited to prototyping to being able to manufacture products in large quantities. The ability to create designs in software and to build 3D products layer by layer in an additive manner has allowed for design flexibility and presents new capabilities for not just the manufacturers but also other industries. This technology that has gained worldwide attention and had created a technological research hype is known as – Additive Manufacturing.

This report will investigate deeper into the developments of Additive Manufacturing, the various categories of technology classified by ASTM International and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as well as the cost and benefit that it brings. In the interest of this report, the focus will be metallic applications and the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of these metal specific Additive Manufacturing technologies. At the end, recommendations for industry adoption of these metallic applications would be looked into.