Until recently, the term 3D printing has been associated with machines low in price or in capability. Inkjets were single nozzle at the start they may now have as many as thousands of nozzles for printing in each pass over a surface.īy the early 2010s, the terms 3D printing and additive manufacturing evolved senses in which they were alternate umbrella terms for additive technologies, one being used in popular language by consumer-maker communities and the media, and the other used more formally by industrial end-use part producers, machine manufacturers, and global technical standards organizations. Continuous Inkjet later evolved to On-Demand or Drop-On-Demand Inkjet. As late as the 1970s the term recorder was associated with inkjet. The earliest inkjets were used as recorders and not printers.
Inkjet was the least familiar technology even though it was invented in 1950 and poorly understood because of its complex nature. The term 3D printing still referred only to the polymer technologies in most minds, and the term AM was more likely to be used in metalworking and end-use part production contexts than among polymer, inkjet, or stereolithography enthusiasts. In contrast, the term subtractive manufacturing appeared as a retronym for the large family of machining processes with material removal as their common process. The umbrella term additive manufacturing (AM) gained popularity in the 2000s, inspired by the theme of material being added together ( in any of various ways).