Additive Manufacturing in Automobile Industry

Automotive industry faces new challenges every day, new design trends and technological deployments from research push companies to develop new models and facelifts in short term, requiring new tools or tool reshaping. The automotive industry is one of the most competitive business areas where time-to-market decrease plays an important role. Additive manufacturing is the solution which enables the flexible production of customized products without significant impact on costs and lead time. Automotive companies developing new models and facelifts every day, pushed by new design trends and technological evolution where aesthetics, aerodynamics, safety, and weight reduction of the vehicle are key issues. Therefore, new tools or tool reshaping for new components is required, for body panels or other technical components. Digitalization helps the automotive industry to turn their ideas into successful vehicle faster and more efficiently. Automobile manufacturers can increase the efficiency of their research and development processes, enabling them to get their products on the market with less time and efficiently.. An important parameter of using metal AM processes in the automotive sector is fabricating complex lightweight structures which at the same time possess good rigidity. The weight of the automotive parts can be reduced significantly by using the ability of AM processes to maximum advantage to produce parts with complex geometries while maintaining relative strengths. This paper provides a review of today and future of additive manufacturing in automobile industry.