Additive manufacturing

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a group of manufacturing techniques that rely on the addition of material to form a new component or addition of some material to an existing component. It is a rapidly developing field of processing. Attention-grabbing innovations appear regularly in the media and there is a great deal of excitement about the possibilities that additive manufacturing opens up for new ways of making products. 

In this free course, Additive manufacturing, you will see how product designs are captured digitally in ways that allow the product to be created by depositing material incrementally. You will be introduced to the principles that underpin additive manufacturing so that you are equipped to make sense of future developments in this field and to decide when or if AM is a viable manufacturing approach for a given product.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course T805 Manufacture materials design [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .