The Evolving Intellectual Property Landscape of Additive Manufacturing

You could call additive manufacturing the new ?media darling? of the manufacturing world. After a relatively quiet period of growth after the introduction of ?stereolithography? in the 1980s, and its limited use for prototyping, additive manufacturing is seeing tremendous growth and attracting new and substantial investment capital. Additive manufacturing has been receiving this attention because of its potential to drastically reduce manufacturing costs and design cycle time, along with allowing for the design of complex structures previously limited by tooling constraints. Take for example an actively cooled airfoil for use in turbine engines. These airfoils will commonly include cooling and flow control passageways, among other features, in order to meeting increasing performance requirements. However, the configuration of these features are often limited by the tooling that is used to form the airfoils in manufacturing processes, such as investment casting. Now consider single crystal castings, which generally have lower thermal conductivity and cannot cool as efficiently, thus demanding even more complex geometries. With additive manufacturing, these geometric limitations are no longer a big concern, opening new doors in the design of aerospace structures. An overview of the intellectual property landscape relative to additive manufacturing and players in the technology is provided, highlighting opportunities and roadblocks to future development.