摘要
Additive Manufacturing(AM)is disruptive and complex not only in its nature but also in what it can make.Humans have always had difficulty absorbing complexity and disruption due to our skeptical nature and need to simplify.AM being a 3-dimensional solution is simply an example of how AM is disruptive because people are adept at thinking in two dimensions.For a technology as transformative as AM to progress,some assumptions have to be made and certain approximations have to be asserted and held to be true until they can be revisited later.When we weigh the societal benefit that AM can and will bring,efficiency comes to the forefront.It could be efficiency of energy use,efficiency of materials utilization,or efficiency in designs that are lighter and then use less energy.No matter what form efficiency takes,it impacts society.To achieve a greater impact,AM must become more pervasive,and for it to become more pervasive,it must become more productive.The additional source of complexity in AM is the sheer number of process variables,such as feedstock,energy source,part geometry,and postprocessing,with more than 100 identified,1 not including the interrelationships between these variables.While similar numbers are present in other manufacturing processes,such as forging and casting,civilization has had between 200 and 5000 years to understand the variables in these processes,which is longer than society wants to wait in the case of AM.
