Assessment of European Research and Development in Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing

Final Report

The final report from this study is available in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.  [~ 6 MB]
All the individual chapters are also available.

• Cover, Frontmatter, Preface
  
• Executive Summary
  
• Ch. 1 - Introduction
  
• Ch. 2 - Methodologies and Processes
  
• Ch. 3 - Manufacturing Advances, Applications, and Challenges
  
• Ch. 4 - Materials and Materials Processing
• Ch. 5 - Process Control and Metrics
• Ch. 6 - Biomedical Applications of Integrated Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing
  
• Ch. 7 - Energy and Environment
• Ch. 8 - Conclusions and Future Requirements
• Appendices
• Panel Biographies
• Site Reports - Europe
• Glossary
  

Workshop

The WTEC workshop on European R&D in Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing, was held at the National Science Foundation (NSF) on December 2, 2003. At the workshop, WTEC's panel of experts focused on the latest work going on in Europe.

The panel's viewgraphs from their presentations are available.

Purpose and Scope

The goal of this study is to gather information on the worldwide status and trends in additive/subtractive manufacturing S&T and disseminate it to government decision makers and the research community. The study panelists will gather information on S&T research at home and abroad useful to the U.S. government for planning its research investments, and will critically analyze and compare the research in the United States with that being pursued abroad. This information will serve the following purposes:

• Identify good ideas overseas worth exploring in U.S. S&T programs
• Clarify research opportunities and needs for advancing progress in the field generally
• Identify opportunities for international collaboration
• Evaluate the position of foreign research programs relative to those in the U.S.

The solid freeform fabrication (SFF) community has learned that 2-D design decomposition allows layered deposition of structures with increasing geometric complexity. However, restriction to layered SFF techniques may be constraining regarding part quality and material variety. Clearly, additive material processes are broader than just layered processes, but even they do not include material subtraction, assembly, and insertion of components made by other processes. Therefore this study will focus on the broader topic of integrative approaches to "material synthesis."

Subtopics likely to be covered in this WTEC study include the following:

• Integrated manufacturing approaches utilizing MEMS, SFF and a variety of other processes to realize products in the mesoscale regime. Additive technologies to be assessed may include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following:
• biological approaches to material deposition
• thin film deposition
• polymer deposition
• metals
• Applications for the above manufacturing approaches in medical devices and tissue-related products
• Technical and management approaches to custom manufacturing
• Focus on synthesis of products rather than synthesis of models
• Focus on basic manufacturing issues that may be common to multiple applications
• Opportunities for optimizing materials and energy use in manufacturing from additive/subtractive manufacturing processes

The study may also address the following non-technical issues:

• Mechanisms for enhancing international and interdisciplinary cooperation in the field
• Opportunities for shortening the lead time for deployment of new manufacturing technologies emerging from the laboratory
• Long-range research, educational, and infrastructure issues that need addressed to promote better progress in the field
• Current government S&T funding levels overseas compared to the United States, to the extent data are available

The above list of topics may be refined by panel members in consultation with the sponsors.