Metal additive manufacturing (AM) has been growing remarkably in the past few years. Thanks to the advantages of unmatched flexibility and zero material waste, this clean technology opens the door for new design solutions with greater material efficiency, which are not possible through conventional machining techniques. In this paper, we provide a technology overview of metal AM techniques that can be utilized in a wide range of applications, including constructing electrical machines. Different techniques of metal AM are discussed and compared. Additionally, the impact of the material forms (powder/wire) on printing speed and quality are studied. Based on the industrial and technical literature, this paper provides a comprehensive review of metal AM in the fabrication of electrical machines and their applications. This includes the current state of the art and associated benefits of AM in these applications.

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The ever-increasing demand for higher-power dense electrical machines has resulted in different electrical, mechanical, and thermal stresses, which can eventually cause machine failure. For this reason, the management of stresses and losses must be thoughtfully investigated to have a highly reliable electrical machine. The literature agrees that winding losses are the dominant loss mechanism in many electrical machines. However, statements vary on how to mitigate these losses along with the aforementioned stresses. To avoid winding failure, a study of the various winding topologies would allow for a better consideration of the challenges and limitations in the performance of different electrical machines. To this aim, this paper introduces a comprehensive review for different winding topologies. Many reported cases in the literature are summarized and compared. Moreover, the utilization of additive manufacturing (AM) in the production of the machine windings is presented, showing a high level of maturity of this emerging technology. Finally, different challenges facing the design of machine windings are introduced including the AC high frequency losses, thermal management, mechanical and acoustic problems, insulation aging, automated production, and winding manufacturability.