Tech Trends in Practice

TREND 243D and 4D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

The One-Sentence Definition

3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing) means creating a 3D object from a digital file by building it layer by layer; 4D printing is based on the same process but with a twist – namely, a built-in ability for the printed object to transform itself.

What Is 3D and 4D Printing and Additive Manufacturing?

If there’s one theme that crops up repeatedly throughout this book, it’s the rise of automation. 3D printing may seem distinctly more low-tech than trends like artificial intelligence (AI) or facial recognition, but it still ties into that theme of business processes becoming more streamlined and automatic. For example, using 3D printing the factories of the future could quickly print spare parts for machinery on-site, without having to wait for those parts to be shipped half-way around the world. Even entire assembly lines could be replaced with 3D printers.

As you can imagine, 3D printing has the potential to transform manufacturing. But, as we’ll see in this chapter, 3D printing has much wider applications – from the good (such as printing human tissue for transplants) to the not-so-good (printing weapons) to the that’s-going-to-take-some-getting-used-to (printing food).

How does it work, though? Traditional manufacturing tends to be a subtractive process, meaning an object is typically cut or hollowed out of its source material (plastic, say, or metal) using something like a cutting ...