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Introduction The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines manufacturing as the process of making something from raw materials by hand or machinery, according to an organized plan and with a clear division of labor. Additive manufacturing (AM), an emerging technology, is a subset of the overall manufacturing ecosystem that has the potential to revolutionize the way we both make and consume products.1 One suggestion made by many casual observers of this technology is that AM will lead to equalization of manufacturing process capability and, thereby, an economically “flat” world, a term coined by Thomas Friedman.2 Friedman highlights many political–social–technological events as evidence for the leveling of the playing field in economic activities across the world. The ability to design a part and manufacture it anywhere in the world using three-dimensional (3D) printing equipment could be interpreted as the realization of this hypothesis. Do such predictions about AM represent an achievable reality? For example, we will be able to print a car using AM in the near future. Although this might appear to be science fiction, the startup company Local Motors, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has, in part,

demonstrated its feasibility. Local Motors uses an emerging technology, namely big-area additive manufacturing (BAAM), to manufacture the chassis of a small two-seater car that will be powered by an electric power drive. The company3,4 is striving to implement an open-innovation economic model5 in which every manufacturing step (e.g., design of cars and parts, materials selection, and manufacturing) can be distributed across the world without any barriers. Based on this example, one might assume that AM has reached maturity for adoption across industrial sectors. However, counterarguments can be made to stress the fact that AM is not advanced; rather, it is clearly an emerging technology with limited applications.6–8 This article attempts to provide a balanced overview by highlighting the technical challenges and approaches to address this debate. Because AM technology development and deployment are expanding at a rapid pace, this article focuses on a subset of materials considered for industrial deployment, namely, structural materials made up of metals and polymers. Recently, an economic analysis indicated that the adoption of AM for structural applications will require a focused effort on materials specifically developed for AM.6 Therefore, in this article, we discuss four different challenges

S.S. Babu, Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA; and Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, USA; [email protected] L. Love, Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and Energy and Transportation Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA; [email protected] R. Dehoff, Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA; [email protected] W. Peter, Manufacturing Dem