Recent innovative developments on additive manufacturing technologies using polymers

Abstract

This chapter describes some of the most relevant technological innovations developed in additive manufacturing (AM) processes. Herein, we will focus on describing the advances carried out on the three AM technologies most extensively employed with polymeric materials: material extrusion, vat photopolymerization, and powder bed fusion. In the case of material extrusion, several innovations were proposed to improve its resolution, energy efficiency, or time consumption. Several innovative procedures are mentioned in this chapter for vat photopolymerization, highlighting the continuous liquid interface printing (CLIP), a variation of the common stereolithography process. CLIP allows fabricating high-resolution 3D-printed structures from the liquid resin using photopolymers. These and several more examples of recent innovations in 3D printing were reviewed in this chapter. We are also focused on inspiring the research community to use these new technologies, generating a new perspective about the manufacturing processes in the near future.