3d manufacturing as an alternative to traditional manufacturing? Over 10 years have passed since when additive manufacturing started being popular in industrial contexts. What is this kind of manufacturing and how does it applies in different industrial fields? Additive manufacturing consist, in great synthesis, in a deposition tool that lays some layers of raw material (they can be both a soft material or a powder, covering the whole range from polymers to metallic materials) one over the other. Through thermal action the layers are melted together creating a, more or less, compact body according to the shape of the 3d drawing. In case of metallic 3d manufacturing, layers of metallic powder are laid one over the other and laser welded to the required shape. The name of “additive manufacturing” comes from the fact that, instead of removing material from a block (as happens in traditional manufacturing), production is ran laying layer after layer, then adding material. This new production style completely changed the concept of manufacturing and it’s opening a wide range of possibilities both for what concern geometries and materials. About geometries, in fact, we can now create hollow bodies or impossible geometries that could be barely imagined with traditional manufacturing systems. About materials, new geometries, for example cell structures, permit to obtain high strength with light and traditionally fragile materials, allowing us to use new materials in applications where they were unthinkable before. The potentialities of this system are really huge, in particular in mechanical engineering, medicine and applications where small special batches of products are required and it’s necessary the use of expensive materials. It is also very useful where and high level of customization is a plus or where “impossible” (from a productive point of view) geometries must be manufactured. On the other hand the high cost of this production way, compared to the traditional methods, the almost always longer production times and the mechanically poorer final result are limiting this manufacturing style to market niches. However it is widely spread in prototypes applications. 3d manufacturing is good for prototyping because it does permit to have a tangible idea of the finished product with its criticalities without investing big money in mass production tools that are expensive and require long times to be realized.