The Use of Additive Manufacturing Techniques in the Development of Polymeric Molds: A Review

The continuous growth of additive manufacturing in worldwide industrial and research fields is driven by its main feature which allows the customization of items according to the customers' requirements and limitations. There is an expanding competitiveness in the product development sector as well as applicative research that serves special-use domains. Besides the direct use of additive manufacturing in the production of final products, 3D printing is a viable solution that can help manufacturers and researchers produce their support tooling devices (such as molds and dies) more efficiently, in terms of design complexity and flexibility, timeframe, costs, and material consumption reduction as well as functionality and quality enhancements. The compatibility of the features of 3D printing of molds with the requirements of low-volume production and individual-use customized items development makes this class of techniques extremely attractive to a multitude of areas. This review paper presents a synthesis of the use of 3D-printed polymeric molds in the main applications where molds exhibit a major role, from industrially oriented ones (injection, casting, thermoforming, vacuum forming, composite fabrication) to research or single-use oriented ones (tissue engineering, biomedicine, soft lithography), with an emphasis on the benefits of using 3D-printed polymeric molds, compared to traditional tooling.