3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to various processes used to synthesized a three-dimensional object , in 3D printing, successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object these objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced from a 3D model or other electronic data source. A 3D printer is a type of industrial robot. 3D printing in the terms original sense refers to processes that sequentially deposit material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads. more recently, the meaning of the term has expanded to encompass a wider variety of techniques such as extrusion and sintering based processes. Technical standards generally use the term additive manufacturing for this broader sense.