Progress in Additive Manufacturing and Rapid Prototyping

Rapid prototyping generally refers to techniques that produce shaped parts by gradual creation or addition of solid material, therein differing fundamentally from forming and material removal manufacturing techniques. This paper tries to summarise one decade of research and developments in rapid prototyping. The first part surveys some general economical and technological trends. The second part of the paper goes into some more details on a process-by-process basis.