Survey on the Advantages of Metal 3D Printing Using Laser Sintering Compared to Traditional Metal Manufacturing Methods.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a niche process that has seen extensive growth and adoption in the past decade in the industrial sector. Among the AM techniques present on the market today there are identified only a few methods allowing the 3D printing of metallic materials to be of special interest for their applications in various domains like the automotive, aeronautical, and healthcare industries. The most important questions needing answers are how to produce components from metallic materials that have superior qualities like versatility, wear resistance, ease of customization, and ease of integration with existing components. Compared to traditional metalworking methods where it has been studied how the metal behaves and morphs during the process and where it is known exactly what to do in order to modify the properties of the resulting component into a favor metal, AM changes everything, forcing a researcher to start from the beginning. While the technology is starting to be used more and more, the need to find production methods leads to consistent quality products and with outstanding material properties. New methods need to be developed to help attune the properties of the 3D printed parts to the requirements of their respective uses. The present study refers to 3D metal additive manufacturing (MAM), providing an overview on the process itself and its possible results as well as hurdles with added methods to overcome them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]