Can 3D Printing Lead to Mass Manufacturing?

Industrial scale 3D printers have for a long time now threatened to change the face of traditional assembly line manufacturing, but it hasn’t really kicked-off the revolution yet. The greatest known limitation of additive manufacturing is its inability to mass-produce. To replace the millions of parts manufactured daily in an assembly line in a factory in China by additive manufacturing would mean installing vast numbers of industrial scale 3D printers that would demand astronomical capital investments that would not be economically competitive. Hence, today AM is generally viewed as a complementary technology, rather than a competitive one when it comes to assembly line manufacturing. However, the tide is slowly turning with more high-volume applications of AM emerging...

Complete article: Can 3D Printing Lead to Mass Manufacturing?