Abstract
Additive manufacturing process is an advanced manufacturing method that is used to
fabricate prototypes, tooling, as well as functional product. Additive manufacturing process can
produce complex part as a single unit object that was not possible with the traditional
manufacturing methods. There are different types of additive manufacturing technologies which
include selective laser melting, laser metal deposition process, fused deposition modelling and
electron beam melting. All these additive manufacturing technologies produce three dimensional
(3D) objects by adding materials layer after layer. The 3D object is built directly from the 3D
computer aided design (CAD) model of the object. Additive manufacturing is a very promising
manufacturing method for the aerospace industry in particular because of its ability to reduce buyto-
fly ratio. This technology is the technology of the future because it is going to change the way
products are designed and manufactured. In this research, various additive manufacturing
technologies are described in detail and some of the research works in this field are also presented.
The future research directions are also highlighted.