Abstract
Over the last decade, the enormous potential of metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes has led these technologies to establish their position in many industries. Much effort is being made toward their widespread application; however, much remains to be done to achieve full industrialization of these processes. Therefore, many companies, research centers and universities are investing in comprehensive research and development activities in order to further promote the industrialization of metal AM. This review traces the progress of metal AM technologies through an investigation of patents. In the present study, beam-based metal AM patents were searched through the Orbit Intelligence database. First, the number of patents per year was studied, indicating that, as expected, there is strong growth in AM patenting activities. The patents were afterward examined in order to highlight the key players in the field, and it was found that the main players investing in this market are: multidisciplinary companies, AM machine producers, end users working, especially in the aerospace sector, universities and research centers. The patents were then analyzed to understand the technology domains covered by each key player and their trend of investments. Finally, the patents in the field of Materials and Metallurgy were studied individually to identify the main topics faced by the most used alloy classes: Al-, Ni- and Ti-based alloys and steels. The extensive study of these patents clearly indicated that the main gaps to fill in metal AM are strongly material dependent and that it is possible to find correlations between the alloy classes, their main industrial applications and their specific AM processability issues. The current study provides insights into global trends that can help industrial markets to identify the right investment direction and research to identify topics for future investigation.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing (AM) was defined by ASTM as the ‘‘process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies, such as traditional machining’’This invited article is part of a special topical focus in the Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance on Additive Manufacturing
Steel has the largest amount of patents, and this might be due, on the one hand, to the fact that it was the first alloy class being processed by AM and, on the other hand, to the frequent use of steel parts in AM systems
The beam-based metal AM patenting trend was investigated to study the continuous growth of these technologies and to highlight the main key players and the most investigated aspects
Summary
Additive manufacturing (AM) was defined by ASTM as the ‘‘process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies, such as traditional machining’’. This invited article is part of a special topical focus in the Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance on Additive Manufacturing. The issue was organized by Dr William Frazier, Pilgrim Consulting, LLC; Mr Rick Russell, NASA; Dr Yan Lu, NIST; Dr Brandon D. America Makes; and Caroline Vail, NSWC Carderock
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