Circular Economy Concept In Additive Manufacturing

Recently, there has been increasing concern about the sustainability of the manufacturing industry, one of the major consumers of energy and raw materials, and therefore, a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions and waste. Additive manufacturing (AM) inherently generates less waste than the conventional manufacturing. In this study, the goal was to apply the concept of circular economy into AM, by recovering process sidestreams back to the feedstock material for Selective Laser Melting. The objective was to prepare powder from 100 % scrap feedstock following two routes: 1) mechanical milling of agglomerated residue powder, and 2) gas atomization of solid scrap without extra alloying to compensate possible alloy losses. The powder properties were analysed and test specimens for the determination of mechanical properties were made from the prepared powders and commercial reference powder. Conducted test series show that with recycled powders properties fully comparable to reference can be achieved.