Environmental and Economic Implications of Distributed Additive Manufacturing: The Case of Injection Mold Tooling

Abstract

SummaryAdditive manufacturing (AM) holds great potentials in enabling superior engineering functionality, streamlining supply chains, and reducing life cycle impacts compared to conventional manufacturing (CM). This study estimates the net changes in supply-chain lead time, life cycle primary energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and life cycle costs (LCC) associated with AM technologies for the case of injection molding, to shed light on the environmental and economic advantages of a shift from international or onshore CM to AM in the United States. A systems modeling framework is developed, with integrations of lead-time analysis, life cycle inventory analysis, LCC model, and scenarios considering design differences, supply-chain options, productions, maintenance, and AM technological developments. AM yields a reduction potential of 3% to 5% primary energy, 4% to 7% GHG emissions, 12% to 60% lead time, and 15% to 35% cost over 1 million cycles of the injection molding production depending on the AM technology advancement in future. The economic advantages indicate the significant role of AM technology in raising global manufacturing competitiveness of local producers, while the relatively small environmental benefits highlight the necessity of considering trade-offs and balance techniques between environmental and economic performances when AM is adopted in the tooling industry. The results also help pinpoint the technological innovations in AM that could lead to broader benefits in future. Keywords:additive manufacturing industrial ecology injection molding life cycle assessment (LCA) life cycle costing (LCC) supply chain management Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website

Charting the Environmental Dimensions of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing

“…Cerdas and colleagues () investigate the possibility for companies to accelerate product development and to consider new supply‐chain models by comparing a conventional mass scale centralized manufacturing system against a 3D printing‐enabled distributed manufacturing system. Huang and colleagues () provide an interprocess comparison of injection molding pathways with conventionally and additively manufactured tooling, combining an assessment of supply‐chain lead time, life cycle energy consumption, emissions, and life cycle costs. This perspective is complemented in a column by Quinlan and colleagues () who, after surveying the material deposition speeds achieved by available AM systems, evaluate industrial, retailer, and consumer perspectives in AM, thereby offering insight as to how AM will challenge traditional models of durable goods provision.…”

Tooling for injection molding using laser-powder bed fusion.

“…By following the part's geometry, the part is cooled in a much more uniform manner. The fabrication of tooling for injection molding using the L-PBF process decreases geometric constraints, while decreasing build times and cost [14][15][16]. In the past, various independent research studies have been reported on tooling with conformal cooling channels [4,15,16,26,27,37].…”

“…This process repeats for all layers until the part is created, as shown in Additive manufacturing is a disruptive technology with annual sales expected to reach $12.1 billion with a growth of 35% during 2018 [13]. The fabrication of tooling for injection molding using L-PBF provides design freedom, while decreasing build times and cost [14][15][16]. Additionally, 3D printing manufacturers could fabricate tooling for injection molding with a variety of materials, such as stainless steels, tool steels, and aluminum alloys [17].…”

“…L-PBF, also known as selective laser melting (SLM), is an additive manufacturing method that melts the metal powders layer by layer using a laser to form 3D structures depending on the CAD file [17,38]. The fabrication of tooling for injection molding using the L-PBF process could decrease geometric constraints, provide design freedom, while decreasing build times and cost [14][15][16]. In the past, various independent research studies have been reported on tooling for injection mold using the L-PBF process [15,16,27,37].…”

“…The fabrication of tooling for injection molding using the L-PBF process could decrease geometric constraints, provide design freedom, while decreasing build times and cost [14][15][16]. In the past, various independent research studies have been reported on tooling for injection mold using the L-PBF process [15,16,27,37]. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no reports in the open literature on the performance of the L-PBF fabricated tooling for injection molding that integrate experiments and mold-filling simulations with changes in injection molded part design and material.…”