Abstract
There is a growing demand for data regarding the environmental and economic performance of additive manufacturing to establish the role of this technology in the future circular industrial economy. This paper provides a comparative analysis of direct energy deposition technology with conventional manufacturing, specifically iron casting, in the context of the repairing capabilities of the direct energy deposition system in a damaged glass bottle mold. Making use of already established methodologies for environmental and economic assessment, a life cycle assessment and a life cycle costing study was conducted on each scenario to provide a holistic perspective on the advantages and limitations of each system. With the gathered life cycle inventory, the main environmental impacts and life cycle costs were determined. The hybrid repairing scenario results show a reduction of the environmental impacts and life cycle costs by avoiding resource consumption in the production of a new mold, with underlying economic advantages identified beyond the calculated results. Through strategic integration based in life cycle approaches, it is concluded that direct energy deposition technology can play a key role in the sustainable development of tooling and manufacturing industries, especially in products with large dimensions, complex geometry, and customized design.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing (AM) has become a disruptive production technology in the manufacturing industry
The results indicate that the machining of the gear generates less environmental impacts than the production by direct energy deposition (DED), concluding that the powder and electricity consumption are the main drivers for the total impacts of the AM scenario
To determine the environmental impact categories that are more relevant for this type of technology and avoid bias in the assessment of the environmental performance, an analysis of the available literature on life cycle assessment (LCA) of AM was conducted
Summary
Additive manufacturing (AM) has become a disruptive production technology in the manufacturing industry. Its application has gone beyond prototyping and at-home production, to a positioned production strategy for the development of high-value products with complex designs and customized features. Contrary to the common subtractive manufacturing processes, the basic principle of AM is the adding of material in a layer-by-layer deposition process to produce parts and components with complex geometry, making use of tridimensional (3D) models developed in digital design software. The deposition of material (either polymers, ceramics, composite, bio-based or metal) occurs through melting by a localized high-intensity heat source and deposition according to the predesigned geometry in the CAD file, followed by cooling at room temperature, generating the desired product. The most popular AM technologies are related to polymer AM due to the low material costs and reduced sizes for consumer-based production.
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