Present and future of Additive Manufacturing

Sammanfattning: 3D printing was invented the early 1980’s, however it was in the last decade that 3D printing started growing in the industrial sector. 3D printing has mostly focused on materials like polymers, but now in the later year metal in 3D printing has begun to industrialize. This new interest formulated the purpose of this study, to investigate why the implementation of metal Additive Manufacturing is not going faster e.g. barriers, what possible benefits can be found using 3D printing as a manufacturing method and how it’s regarded from a sustainability perspective. The method used for this study was a qualitative method in form of interviews with selected persons. The interviews were held in a semi-constructed manner so that no information would be missed, and the selected persons were categorized into two groups; Theorists and Practitioners. Data analysis was completed and presented using a thematical approach, and five themes were generated where the empirics were presented. Barriers that were found in theory and empirics were the following; design competence, high investment cost and a need for a more trustworthy process i.e. standardization. Benefits with 3D printing were found to be, cost in form of time and money that can be saved, e.g. when creating a product that consists of one single component but were previously created in conventional methods in multiple components which later needed to be merged together. As a conclusion it is clearer why it is taking time and what needs to be done in order to overcome these barriers. From the sustainability perspective it is known that life of a product created in Additive Manufacturing is circular i.e. everything is recyclable as long as the correct precautions are followed.