Energy- and cost-wise decision support tools for the manufacturing approach selection

The technological suitability of Additive Manufacturing (AM) for end-use components is, by now, well recognized. In order to understand the actual potential of AM technologies, two key aspects are still to be better investigated: the cost and the environmental performance with respect to the conventional manufacturing routes. In the present paper, cost and primary energy models for both machining and additive/subtractive integrated approaches are presented. Comparative analyses while varying the product shape are carried out for the manufacture of steel components. Cradle-to-gate plus end-of-life system boundaries are applied, and the relevance of light-weighting is accounted for. The here proposed models allow the development of different energy- and cost-wise decision support tools suitable for identifying the sustainable domain of application of AM.