A methodological framework to model cumulative energy demand and production costs for additive and conventional manufacturing approaches

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes have undergone a considerable evolution in terms of industrial applicability. From prototyping applications, AM has evolved to become a competitive technology to manufacture end products in comparison with conventional manufacturing. Despite that, the environmental impact advantage of AM is limited to some production scenarios and depends on several factors: high geometric complexity, weight reduction enabled by topology optimisation, light-weight product to be assembled for transportation. Considering production cost, AM process for metal-based components proved to be often more expensive than those produced by conventional approaches. To provide new piece of knowledge in the domain of AM applicability, in this paper a comparative analysis of costs and energy demand for additive, subtractive and mass conserving manufacturing processes is presented and applied to two different Ti-6Al-4V case studies (namely, an axisymmetric and a T-shape component). Turning/milling, hot forging and EBM were analysed and compared one another. The modelling and the results were analysed with varying the product complexity, the batch size, the method for accounting for the credit arising from recycling and the extent of light-weighting obtained by AM application. The result is a framework enabling informed process design and selection with varying production scenarios.