Preface

Rapid prototyping technologies, also known as 3D printing or additive manufacturing technologies, are continuously developing due to their potential applications in the industrial and medical sectors. New types of materials (plastic, metallic, ceramic, etc.) are being conceived every year and testing of these materials using 3D printing technologies is of great interest among researchers worldwide.

As such, this book focuses primarily on the trends, challenges, and opportunities of these new modern manufacturing technologies. It also examines rapid prototyping (3D printing) in general with a focus on environmental challenges, recycling, energy usage and cost, and the need for standardization and certification in this field. The book discusses barriers and challenges of 3D printing methods, as well as customization of different methods for certain applications in the industrial sector.

Chapters emphasize at a very practical level how computer-aided design is required to be approached in close correlation with the process parameters and structural properties of the realized parts to be made by 3D printing. They also address how the designing process of customized parts must be considered in concordance with the particularities of the rapid prototyping (3D printing) technologies to be used for producing these parts.

This book is a useful resource for researchers, Ph.D. students, professors, engineers, and other readers interested in 3D printing.

> **Răzvan Păcurar** Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Robotics and Production Management, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

**1**

**Chapter 1**

Opportunities

*Răzvan Păcurar*

**1. Introduction**

**methods**

Introductory Chapter: Rapid

Since their advent, Rapid Prototyping technologies, nowadays known also as Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing methods became widely used in different applications that are used both, in industrial and medical domains [1, 2]. The benefits and advantages of using such modern manufacturing methods based on adding layers of materials, instead of removing (subtracting) material are multiple, consisting in the efficiency in producing parts more rapidly and with a minimum waste of material in the end [3]. Besides the advantages of these methods, there are also some disadvantages that consist in the performances that are reached using these types of technologies in terms of accuracy, roughness, and density in close correlation with the type of materials that are used in the additive manufacturing (Rapid Prototyping) methods

**2. General presentation on the main Rapid Prototyping and Rapid Tooling** 

The manufacturing processes (most of them) are still quite expensive and the range of materials that can be used is still quite limited, even if in the last year's lot of progress has been made and quite new types of materials that are suitable to be used

Diversity of Rapid Prototyping methods is really impressive. The methods that are using molten plastic material that is heated up and extruded through a nozzle are the most spread and developed nowadays on the market [6]. Manufacturing of parts made of resin material by Vat polymerization (curing of the material using UV light) or manufacturing of different parts by Material Jetting or Binder Jetting, methods that are based on the use of different binders or fusing agents that are being sintered or cured by light are also 3D printing technological variants that are used on a larger scale in this field in the world [7]. Powder bed fusion or direct energy deposition methods are widely used to produce different types of metallic parts made by sintering or welding metallic powder grains in order to materialize one part made by 3D printing technologies [8, 9]. The parts can be made from a different range of metallic materials using these methods, starting with light materials like aluminum alloys or nickel alloys and ending with materials that have much higher strength like titanium alloys, tool steel alloys, etc. [10–13]. In the last year's lot of researches were reported

and complexity of the parts that are required to be manufactured [4].

on the 3D printing technological methods occurred on the market [5].

Prototyping – Trends and
