Additive manufacturing processes, used for more than 25 years, are no longer confined torapid prototyping applications. Mostly used nowadays in niche markets (medicalapplications, aerospace...) to manufacture metallic parts, they should provideimprovements in terms of time-to-market, ecological impact and design compared totraditional industrial processes. Current metallic additive manufacturing studied in thispaper are Selective Laser Sintering, Direct Metal Laser Sintering, Selective LaserMelting, Electron Beam Melting and Direct Metal Deposition. The performances of theseprocesses are investigated through criteria derived from the time cost quality triangleand some prospects concerning these processes are given.
