Additive manufacturing of composite materials by FDM technology: A review

The additive manufacturing known also as "3D printing" or "rapid prototyping" is a present manufacturing method (compared to classic manufacturing methods) where layers of material are deposited at a time (successively) until a finished product is obtained. Depending on the phenomenon, material (in solid, liquid or powder state) used by the 3D printing equipment, a solid part, can be achieved using processes as: binder jetting,extrusion, material jetting, direct energy, vat photo-polymerization and powder bed fusion. In the present paper, we have summarized some knowledge regarding the 3D printing technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) prototyping method, and different types of test regarding PLA material properties (tensile test, flexural test). The FDM technology has registered benefits as cost, product quality, functionality and manufacturing time, continuously optimized and adopted by more and more companies, research institutes and consumers.