Environmental Dimensions of Additive Manufacturing: Mapping Application Domains and Their Environmental Implications

Abstract

SummaryAdditive manufacturing (AM) proposes a novel paradigm for engineering design and manufacturing, which has profound economic, environmental, and security implications. The design freedom offered by this category of manufacturing processes and its ability to locally print almost each designable object will have important repercussions across society. While AM applications are progressing from rapid prototyping to the production of end-use products, the environmental dimensions and related impacts of these evolving manufacturing processes have yet to be extensively examined. Only limited quantitative data are available on how AM manufactured products compare to conventionally manufactured ones in terms of energy and material consumption, transportation costs, pollution and waste, health and safety issues, as well as other environmental impacts over their full lifetime. Reported research indicates that the specific energy of current AM systems is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher compared to that of conventional manufacturing processes. However, only part of the AM process taxonomy is yet documented in terms of its environmental performance, and most life cycle inventory (LCI) efforts mainly focus on energy consumption. From an environmental perspective, AM manufactured parts can be beneficial for very small batches, or in cases where AM-based redesigns offer substantial functional advantages during the product use phase (e.g., lightweight part designs and part remanufacturing). Important pending research questions include the LCI of AM feedstock production, supply-chain consequences, and health and safety issues relating to AM.

Note on the Rate and Energy Efficiency Limits for Additive Manufacturing

“…This paper builds upon the work of others who have carefully measured, analyzed, and documented the energy use and time requirements for a variety of AM technologies. These include, in particular, Baumers and colleagues (, , , , ), Faludi and colleagues (), Kellens and colleagues (, , ), Kruth and colleagues (, ), Schleifenbaum and colleagues (), and Buchbinder and colleagues (), and their co‐workers, as well as many others listed in our references.…”

“…Kellens and colleagues () report a range of measured electrical energy values for various commercial additive technologies ranging from 51 to 1,247 MJ/kg with many of the same references that we use here.…”

Consumer Intervention Mapping—A Tool for Designing Future Product Strategies within Circular Product Service Systems

“…Digital fabrication technologies such as additive manufacturing (AM), more commonly referred to as "3D Printing", can enable reductions in resource consumption by the consolidation of parts and materials ( [13] p. 101); lower transport emissions by the localisation of factories [14]; reduce material and part waste by 'make-on-demand' production models [15]; extend product lifetimes by the creation of bespoke or personalised products that more closely meet an individual user's needs [16]; and extend product lifetimes through repairs enabled by keeping 'digital stock' catalogues of replacement parts [17]. At the same time, concerns have been expressed regarding the reusability of personalised products [18]; quality control across multiple, distributed factories (and the potential for increased failure rates) [19]; and energy requirements in the production and post-processing of individual parts [20]. However, while much work is ongoing to both understand the sustainability implications of RdM and to optimize digital manufacturing processes to limit their environmental impact, little work has been done to conceptualise future scenarios of RdM, particularly in relation to stakeholders who (in a mass manufacturing paradigm), have little input but are nonetheless affected by the externalities of NPD.…”

Charting the Environmental Dimensions of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing

“…Providing context for this Special Issue, Kellens and colleagues () review available research on the environmental dimensions and related impacts of AM, reporting that only part of the overall process taxonomy is yet documented in terms of its environmental performance and life cycle inventory (LCI) efforts. The authors identify pertinent questions relating to the LCI of AM feedstock production, supply‐chain consequences, and health and safety issues relating to AM, all of which are dealt with in the work contained in this Special Issue.…”

“…As summarized in this Special Issue (Kellens et al. ), the degree of variety in, sometimes competing, operating principles in AM creates a large field for investigation of environmental performance, only part of which has been explored with reliable quantitative data being available for an even smaller subset, focusing mainly on the energy consumption of core AM processes (Huang et al. ).…”