Additive manufacturing technology,also called threedimensional (3D) printing technology,is a method using materials incremental manufacturing philosophy to manufacture entity parts.Over the past two decades,there has been a great of intensive research into this field for its time and cost reduction,human interaction,consequently the product development cycle,and the possibility to create almost any shape that could be very difficult to computer numerical control machine tools.Along with the rapid development of laser technology,computer technology and CAD/CAM technology,additive manufacturing technology is widely used in the field of aerospace,automotive,biomanufacturing,architectural design and so on.An overview is present of the different additive manufacturing processes,application,and its current research,sums the facing challenges,and discussed the development trend.