Energy consumption consideration of 3D printing

3D printing represents a novel technology in manufacturing due to its ability to create highly customized products with complex geometries. Additive manufacturing is thought to continue to expand because it has significant advantages such as freedom of design, mass customization and the ability to produce complex structures. Moreover, additive manufacturing provides to have environmental benefits. This paper aims at drawing attention to the assessment of 3D printing from benefits and criticality perspective of process. In particularly, this study analyzes an energy model able to estimate energy consumption of 3D printing processes. In the environmental impact assessment of this process a critical factor is the energy consumption of 3D printing that is possible to divide into two parts, primary and secondary energy. In this work, an energy model is introduced for each part able to do energy estimation and optimization. The estimate of energy allows to reduce energy use and related CO2 emissions during the realization of the product. Overall, this paper gives an overview of benefits and criticality of 3D printing, including an analysis of energy that can give improvements required to reach sustainable process.