Lifecycle analysis for environmentally conscious solid freeform manufacturing

A lifecycle based process model for analyzing environmental performance of SFM processes and SFM based rapid tooling processes is presented for analyzing SFM based Rapid Tooling (RT) processes in this paper. The process environmental performance assessment model considers material, energy, and disposal scenarios. The material use, process parameters (e.g. scanning speed) and power use can affect the environmental consequence of a process when material resource, energy, human health and environmental damage are taken into account. The presented method is applied to the SLA process and two SLA based rapid tooling processes. The method can be used to compare different Rapid Prototyping (RP) and RT processes in terms of their environmental friendliness and for further multi-objective decision making.