Comparative Life Cycle Inventory Of PBF Additive Manufacturing And CNC Machining

Additive manufacturing is often referred to as resource-efficient or even sustainable manufacturing with very little reliable scientific data to support the claims. Here we have made a comparative life cycle inventory of the energy and raw material flows during PBF-LB AM and CNC machining of three components having different geometrical features and functionalities: gear, impeller and manifold. The scope of this study was on the manufacturing phase of the components (from gate-to-gate). The energy and material consumptions were measured, with emphasis on providing accurate, transparent and reliable data of the most important input flows through direct measurement. For all the three studied components, PBF-LB consumed more energy, but required less material, than CNC machining. Geometry of the component had the most significant impact on the energy and material consumption in these processes. Optimizing part geometry and process parameters in PBF-LB to minimize resource consumption showed much potential for improvement.