Attributes relevant for sustainable additive manufacturing – material driven approach

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) covers variety of applications in industrial manufacturing, healthcare industry, as well as 3D home printing desktop applications. It has significant contribution in the manufacturing technology development, while simultaneously creates an impact on the economy of scale. The production cost of AM is almost linear, regardless of the size of the production batch. Furthermore, an increasing parts complexity does not necessarily means an increase of the production costs. It offers new degrees of freedom in the product design, enables reengineering and redesign, and facilitates resource optimization (energy and materials) and waste reduction. At the same time, it promotes reducing the number of assembly operations while contributing to more energy efficient and more cost-effective production. As one of the mostly spread AM technologies, which is quite limited in terms of material selection but has numerous advantages, e.g. during crisis that imply supply chain disruptions, the focus of this paper is on the 3D printing features. In particular, with the assistance of Multi Attribute Analysis, this study elaborates and identifies relevant attributes describing the 3D printing process and its features through the perspective of materials susceptible to 3D printing. The holistic approach presented in this paper introduces a new perspective for decision makers in the field of 3D printing, because in addition to the traditional material selection process, introducing attributes relating only to cost and manufacturability, it includes attributes describing the extended sustainability paradigm. The approach presented herein, categorizes attributes describing the 3D printing process in five main groups, i.e. economic, social and environmental (corresponding to the sustainability paradigm), amended by the technical and legal aspects.