From additive manufacturing to 3D/4D printing 2: Current techniques, improvements and their limitations

Abstract

The evocative expression “3D printing” has been overtaken in everyday speech by the expression generally preferred by scientists and engineers, “additive manufacturing”. In both cases, it is a matter of manufacturing objects in successive layers, and soon every workshop and every school will have a 3D printer and engage in additive manufacturing. Self-service workshops known as fab-labs already offer users the possibility to create their own objects. However, the adventure is not over, as “4D” is coming up over the horizon with materials that evolve over time, not to mention “bio-printing”, which aims to create organs to be used to repair the living. Furthermore, the 3D printing of tomorrow, which will be performed without layers, threatens to make the term “additive manufacturing” obsolete, thereby making it possible to return to the initial concept of 3D printing. Whatever the case may be, we are faced with not only a very active and booming world, but also a complex world that calls on numerous skills in physics, engineering, chemistry of materials and mechanics with a resolutely multidisciplinary and convergent approach.