A review of hybrid manufacturing processes – state of the art and future perspectives

Today, hybrid manufacturing technology has drawn significant interests from both academia and industry due to the capability to make products in a more efficient and productive way. Although there is no specific consensus on the definition of the term ‘hybrid processes’, researchers have explored a number of approaches to combine different manufacturing processes with the similar objectives of improving surface integrity, increasing material removal rate, reducing tool wear, reducing production time and extending application areas. Thus, hybrid processes open up new opportunities and applications for manufacturing various components which are not able to be produced economically by processes on their own. This review paper starts with the classification of current manufacturing processes based on processes being defined as additive, subtractive, transformative, joining and dividing. Definitions of hybrid processes from other researchers in the literature are then introduced. The major part of this paper reviews existing hybrid processes reported over the past two decades. Finally, this paper attempts to propose possible definitions of hybrid processes along with the authors’ classification, followed by discussion of their developments, limitations and future research needs.