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Additive manufacturing is an advanced manufacturing method used to fabricate prototypes, tooling as well as functional products. Additive manufacturing helps us produce complex parts as single-unit objects, which was not possible with the traditional manufacturing methods. There are different types of additive-manufacturing technologies, including selective laser melting, laser-metal-deposition process, fused deposition modeling and electron-beam melting. All these additive-manufacturing technologies produce three-dimensional (3D) objects by adding materials layer after layer. A 3D object is built directly from a 3D computer-aided-design (CAD) model of the object. Additive manufacturing is a very promising method for the aerospace industry, in particular because of its ability to reduce the buy-to-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.
Adekanye et al. (Mon,) studied this question.