Does metal additive manufacturing in industry 4.0 reinforce the role of substractive machining?

Abstract

The article describes in a review and debatable way a trend that can be seen in modern industry, also known as the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. After years of dynamic development of additive techniques from polymeric, composite, ceramic and metal materials, it can be noticed that these techniques have penetrated into the modern production reality. In particular, it is used by such industries as space, air, automotive, precision, power, electronics and the medical industry. The article focuses on the answer to the question contained in the title. In almost all applications of metal additive manufacturing, further processing is necessary in order to obtain the correct shape and/or geometry accuracy. So there is a phenomenon of repeated interest in an accurate, often multi-axis, substractive machining. The more problematic machining, the more it is used in machining of elements with the so-called free forms resulting even from optimizing the topology of additively manufactured metal elements. The methods of metal additive manufacturing allow to obtain a geometry that until now was impossible to achieve using conventional methods, and generates additional technological problems in substractive machining. The answer to the somewhat rhetorical question contained in the title of the article is self-evident, and it is confirmed by observations from industry events and literature reports related to classical and hybrid additive-substractive machining methods.