  The promise of Additive Manufacturing (AM) includes reduced transportation
and warehousing costs, reduction of source material waste, and reduced
environmental impact. AM is extremely useful for making prototypes and has
demonstrated the ability to manufacture complex parts not possible (or
prohibitively expensive) with conventional machining. Scientists and
manufactures are finding increased uses for AM in creation of all types of
finished products including those built from polymers, biological material, and
metals. Although companies such as GE have been using 3D printing for Additive
Manufacturing for over thirty years to make mandrels for light bulb
manufacturing, application areas of Additive Manufacturing have increased
substantially in recent years, particularly due to the reduction in cost of 3D
printers. Like most emergent technologies, there are bound to be growing pains
with AM. This paper looks at the software that supports AM and 3D printing and
their vulnerability to cyber-attacks, intellectual property theft, defect rates
of AM software (which can cause undesired consequences themselves and also
create vulnerabilities that a hacker may exploit), part reliability and safety
of devices incorporating 3D printed parts (when making mission critical parts),
and security/throughput issues of computer networks. Literature searches,
consulting with technical experts and a relatively new hazard analysis
technique will be used, one especially developed for software intensive systems
called Systemic Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA). The purpose of this white
paper is to identify risks (or hazards for mission critical parts) for AM in
this emergent stage so that mitigations can be applied before accidents occur.
A second purpose of this white paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of STPA
as a hazard analysis technique in a field that is still relatively new.
