# Additive Manufacturing and Textiles--State-of-the-Art
## 1 Introduction  
Three dimensional printing (3 DP); also called additive manufacturing (AM) represents a method to create objects via step by step layering used for pre-production or production. By creating a 3D model with a computer-aided design (CAD) program [1] and slicing, the object can be created without additional tools and waste of material [2]. A 3 DP is the opposite of traditional, subtractive manufacturing, which cuts away unnecessary material to create the desired shape [2, 3].  
Since the introduction of additive manufacturing in the 1970s, a wide array of technologies has emerged from few key patents [4]. For example: material extrusion [5], binder jetting [6], directed energy deposition [7] and laminated object manufacturing (LOM) [8] (see Figure 1).  
Emergent 3D printing technologies are being built upon these fundamental methods by incorporating multi material printing to produce complex structures [9], bio-printing with various soft and biocompatible materials [10], optimizing the AM technology with higher speeds, improved resolution and lower costs [11, 12] and combining AM with traditional manufacturing [13, 11, 14, 15, 16].  
Additive manufacturing has recently found its way into the field of the textile industry and promises to revolutionize the textile supply chain [17]. Due to their potential to significantly improve both the geometric complexity and functionality available from conventional fiber-based textiles, AM presents an opportunity for development of novel solutions for conventional and high-performance textile applications [17, 18].  
Analysis of the research papers, related to \"3D printing of textiles\" and registered in Scopus shows that after the first record in Scopus from 1988 (the data base first record in Scopus) until 2012 there constant but minimal amount of publications per year in this area. Starting from 2012 the publications per year increase rapidly from 5 to 50--and keeps that level for the last years [19], where it has to be taken into account that year 2020 is not over [20]. This increased number of high quality publications after 2012 can be explained with the significantly increased availability of 3D printers at acceptable prices after this period, which allowed to more researchers to start making research in this area (see Figure 2). The real number of publications in the area of AM is significantly higher, because the contributions to various conferences, exhibitions, web-blogs, student thesis and other events are not registered in Scopus. Furthermore, there is large number of research focused on the AM process itself, the materials, software etc., but not related to textiles, so they are not considered in this diagram.  
This paper has the aim to present review about the current state of the art of the application of the additive manufacturing in combinations with textiles or for textile like applications.  
Figure 1: Principles of common additive manufacturing (AM) technologies: (**a**) fused deposition modeling (FDM), (**b**) direct ink writing (DIW), (**c**) directed energy based deposition (**d**) binder jetting process, (**e**) vat photo polymerization, (**f**) powder bed fusion with a laser sintering process.  
The paper is structured into several sections. Section 2 gives overview about the design or preprocessing of the geometry for printing. Section 3 presents overview of the printing methods for production of flexible, \"textile like\" structures by 3D printing. Section 4 is dedicated on printing on textiles including the adhesion issue, examples and 4D printing as extension of this principle. The following sections are concentrated on the printing of flexible structures and printing with flexible materials. The paper finishes with overview of the current applications and analysis of the advantages and disadvantages.