THE DISRUPTIVE EVOLUTION OF 3D PRINTING

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the promising technologies that have served as a bridge between digital and physical domains without the need of tooling and human intervention. Its ability to turn digital models into physical objects allows designers to design, scan, share, and send digital representations of physical objects just as they can images or text online. With advancement of material science, this technology has greatly improved and now used for many more applications such as energy, healthcare, automotive and aerospace. Considering these recent applications and rapid growth, experts believe that the 3D printing technologies are highly disruptive and this disruption will continue through 2025. This paper reviews the disruptive potential of 3D printing processes and discusses a recent development, i.e. 3D concrete printing, which will hopefully bring success to building and construction industries in the near future.