Digital Twins, AI, and Cybersecurity in Additive Manufacturing: A Comprehensive Review of Current Trends and Challenges
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article titled “Digital Twins, AI, and Cybersecurity in Additive Manufacturing: A Comprehensive Review of Current Trends and Challenges” presents a comprehensive and up-to-date review on the integration of emerging technologies — Digital Twins (DT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Cybersecurity — within the context of Additive Manufacturing (AM), with a special focus on metal additive manufacturing (Metal AM) applications. The study is well-structured, bibliographically robust (with more than 100 references), and addresses both the advances and the challenges associated with the adoption of these technologies in the Industry 4.0 landscape.
Although the article presents many strengths, the following recommendations and suggestions are offered to the authors:
- Explore concrete industrial applications by including more real-world case studies with quantitative results, which would strengthen the practical applicability of the proposed approaches.
- Conduct a combined (rather than isolated) analysis of AI, DT, and Cybersecurity technologies, thereby demonstrating the synergy and high integration potential of these technologies, especially in real industrial environments.
- The conclusion section could more clearly emphasize the expected impacts and pathways for adoption, particularly in small- and medium-sized enterprises.
- The authors could include a brief analysis of the implementation costs of the proposed systems (especially those involving Blockchain and DT), which would be particularly helpful for readers from the industrial sector.
Author Response
Thank you. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorssee the attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsTwo major concerns about this work:
1) the manufacturing aspect itself is not reflected in the review
2) There is no elaborated outcome from the critical review itself
3) Classes of works that may be relevant have not been included, i.e.
a) Gunasegaram, D. R., Murphy, A. B., Matthews, M. J., & DebRoy, T. (2021). The case for digital twins in metal additive manufacturing. Journal of Physics: Materials, 4(4), 040401.
b) Stavropoulos, P., Papacharalampopoulos, A., Michail, C. K., & Chryssolouris, G. (2021). Robust additive manufacturing performance through a control oriented digital twin. Metals, 11(5), 708.
c) Owen, C. (2024). Reduced Order Modeling Enabled Predictions of Additive Manufacturing Processes (Master's thesis, Purdue University).
4) there is not critical comparison of the architectures
Author Response
Thank you. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease elaborate on the last comment on architectures of digital twins. Showing potential architectures like the one in Fig. 5 would suffice.
Author Response
Comment 01: Please elaborate on the last comment on architectures of digital twins. Showing potential architectures like the one in Fig. 5 would suffice.
Answer 01:
Thank you for your valuable feedback on the previous draft. I have revised the section on pages 10-11 in response to the reviewer’s comment about the lack of a critical comparison of Digital Twin (DT) architectures.
The updated version now includes a detailed comparison of hierarchical, layered, cloud-based, modular hybrid, and control-oriented DT frameworks in the context of additive manufacturing (AM). It highlights their unique characteristics, strengths, and limitations. The final paragraph also summarizes the architectural trade-offs and positions the intelligent hierarchical DT as the most effective option for real-time, autonomous control in AM environments.
