Additive  Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is a process that involves manufacturing of a part or a component

layer by layer and more complex shapes can be manufactured by this process.

Despite its greater potential there are certain major challenges faced in additive
manufacturing

Cost & Complexity

This is a very good manufacturing process but the process generally include the design of the
work part mostly in software’s like CAD and providing  this file as input to the
manufacturing system, the operator inputs are also needed to be in computerized format, so
this process needs specialized equipment and trained labour making it costly. The process
generally includes raw material which show good bind ability, ductility and formable, lacking
these result in using binding and additives to improve the raw work part. In most of the
additive manufacturing techniques the raw material needed to be feed in to the system as wire
or string. The working environment also needed to be controlled as in most of the cases the
layer formed are still reactive towards the factors like air, dust etc.

So all these makes the system challenging to work and makes it complex and costly over
other conventional manufacturing processes.

Strength & Rework

Strength of the work part is a major issue when coming to additive manufacturing, as it
includes several factors like poor adhesive layers, gaps and alignment errors, porosity,
environmental reactivity etc, all contribute toward decreasing the strength of the final work
part. The raw material needed to pre heated to a desired temperature to make it easily
mouldable to the shape and making it reactive enough to form a bond with its adjacent layers
and reducing the interaction with the environment will improve the work part quality.

Generally the work part is manufactured unattended and this layered way of manufacturing
makes the surface rough, so in order to get a complete finished part a certain amount of
rework need to be done using manual finishing operations like sanding and painting.

Sl.No 3D Printing SLS(Selective laser sintering)

1 This process involves a print head deposits
an inorganic binder material onto a polymer,
metallic powder. Depositing on layer after
other to manufacture the part.
2 The powder materials are blends of polymers
and fibres, foundry sand, and metals like
stainless steels, aluminium, and titanium.
Simply photo resins.
3 The post process involves curing and firing
4 Strength of the work part is less and has high
This process involves a laser beam guided
by a computer to be focused on to a thin
layer of powder, tracing and sintering to
form a required cross section and
repeating this process until the required
shape is formed.
The materials include polymer, wax,
metals, ceramics, PVC.
Most of the times the curing is not
essential unless ceramics are used.
The strength of the work part is higher
 porosity.
5 Full colour parts can be manufactured
6 Support structures are used when complex
parts are produced.
7 Resolution is mostly 50* 50*200 µm
8 Applications includes prototypes, jigs,
fixtures, spare parts and parts in space crafts.
than 3DP
Mono colour parts are present
No need for any support structure as
loose power in the chamber itself shows
good support to the structure and part is
fully dense.
Resolution is 10*10*50 µm
Medical industry, Mechanical and
automobile parts, plastic prosthetics.

Feeders : The raw material feeders convey the plastic grains into the hopper which then moves to
the central region for melting. Generally the manual feeding cannot reach the rate so we use
automated feeders in most of the plastic forming processes.

Pumps : Pressure inside the processing systems sometimes increases so high that it blocks the flow
of plastic fluid on to the work chamber, so there is need for device that would pressurize the flow
thus we use metering or pumps to make the system work without pressure blockings.

Spinneret : Spinneret a devices which are generally used in extraction process when we need to
manufacture reinforced plastics. Simply a spinneret consists of tiny holes through which the flow is
resembling the semisolid polymers.

Compressor : Whenever a the billet tube is entered into a mould cavity it needs a high pressure hot
air blast to get into the required shape and the pressure need to be 350 to 700 kPa. So the
compressor helps in compressing the air to the required pressure and let it flow inside the mould
cavity through tubes.