There may or may not be slight differences between what’s called “3D printing” and “additive manufacturing”, but essentially both are advanced techniques that could spell the end of assembly lines as we know them.
It’s a widely known historic fact that giant car companies pioneered what we now known as the assembly line, where a product – such as a car or any other complex item – would move along production line, where different workers and teams of workers would do their jobs and eventually a finished product would be the result.
This process, however, is now being reconsidered in an age where customers are asking for increaing amounts of customisation and new technologies such as 3D printing and additive manufacturing are making this customisation possible. [Read more…] about Hannover Messe: Smart materials paving the way to 3D printing and to the ‘microfactory’