Introduction

The goals of this assignment are to compare the benefits and disadvantages of using

traditional manufacturing methods and additive manufacturing to build a small

decorative object. The object is a small, faceted statue of a Labrador dog, the dog sits

on a thin platform with the name “Benjamin McDaniel” written in front of the dog. The

object was originally designed and made with additive manufacturing in mind and

required supports to make the object properly. The object is 16mm wide and 18mm tall

and weighed about 246 grams with supports and 226 grams without supports. The goal

of this assignment is to compare the environmental load that two methods would cause

when building this object, the two methods being fused deposition modeling, and a

more conventional method, injection molding. I expect there to be a noticeable

difference between the environmental load of the two methods, the smaller load being

caused from injection molding. I predict injection molding to have a smaller

environmental load because it is a more refined method that has overall fewer variables

that can impact the process and final product of the object.

For context, the process of injection molding involves dropping small pellets of the

chosen material into a barrel where they are melted by heater bands around the barrel

and pushed forward by a rotating screw. Once the now molten plastic reaches the end

of the screw, it is injected into a mold. The mold has extremely thin vents that allow air

to escape, as well as a coolant that runs through the mold cools the molten plastic.

Once the plastic melts, the mold is removed, and the object is complete.

The process of fused deposition modeling (FDM) involves a slicing a computer-

generated model into individual layers, this information is then sent to the FDM machine
for printing. An extruder is the material it uses through the machine. The extruder then

melts the material and begins to individually lay down each layer of the object onto a

build platform. Once the object is complete, it can then be removed and processed until

complete, this final process usually involves removing the supports required to print the

object, as well as giving the object a smoother surface using chemicals.

Scope Definition

The scope of the life cycle assessment that will be conducted is a cradle-to-grave

assessment. Meaning that the assessment will cover the entirety of the object’s life,

from the creation of the materials used to create the object, to the final disposal of the

object. The full assessment will involve the following, material creation, manufacturing

stage, print waste disposal, and disposal of the object.

The functional unit, or unit of measure used throughout the LCA, will be the dog statue

stated in the introduction.

Figure 1. Summaries of Levels of Evaluation of Life Cycles

Life Cycle Level 1 Summary Level 2 Summary

Material The method with this level will have an The method with this level will have an
Production overall higher amount of energy required to overall lower amount of energy required
create one kilogram of the used material. to create one kilogram of the used
material.
Printing The method with this level will have an The method with this level will have an
Process overall higher amount of energy required to overall lower amount of energy required
print one kilogram of the used material. to print one kilogram of the used
material.
Printing The method with this level will have an The method with this level will have an
Process overall higher amount of wasted material overall lower amount of wasted material
Waste and energy required to create the functional and energy required to create the
Disposal unit. functional unit.
The material extraction portion of the assessment will cover the environmental load from

creating the material. The material used for the additive manufacturing method was

polylactic acid (PLA) a very common material used in 3D printing. The material used for

this assessment for the injection molding process will be polypropylene, a thermoplastic

that is commonly used with this method.

The production portion of the assessment will cover the following, the environmental

load from producing the object which include the energy used by the machines and the

lifecycle of the machines. The location for the additive manufacturing process will be

assumed to be a home, or someplace a personal 3D printing machine would normally

be. While the injection molding location will be assumed to be similar to a factory,

somewhere urban where constant power can be supplied.

The print waste disposal will mostly involve the additive manufacturing method, this is

due to the process of injection molding not requiring supports or other parts of a printing

process that are wasted before the final product. The additive manufacturing portion will

involve how much material is wasted because of the added supports.

The final portion of the assessment will cover the disposal of the object. It will compare

how disposing of the object and the load it has on the environment will change

depending on the material that the object is made of. Despite being made of different

materials, both objects will be assumed to be disposed after ten years of use. This is

because it is assumed that a decorative piece such as a dog statue will be thrown away

first before it deteriorates.

Printing Process (FDM)

All forms of additive manufacturing present some sort of risk when manufacturing, these

risks can come in many forms such as fires or breathable particles that can become

dangerous if exposed to them for too long. Yoon et al. 1 (2015) have found that

processes such as FDM use printers that give off nano-sized particles.

Production of Material and Product

The production of both the materials and the product will be assumed to be in San

Diego, California. 2The reason I have selected California as the site for production is

because according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020), in 2019 it had one of

the largest amounts of employed production workers in the United States. San

Francisco was chosen as the specific city due to its high population. We can assume

that many manufactured products produced in California travel through San Francisco

and other more populated cities, especially before they are to be shipped out through

the postage system.

Transportation of Material and Product

The transportation of the material will be assumed to be around 30 miles for each

material. The product will be transported from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona. We

will assume that the product will be transported using a truck across the entire distance

of roughly 865 miles. The product will be disposed of at the same landfill, which is 3

miles away. It will be transported using a garbage truck where it will dispose of the

model in the landfill. Both distances to transport the object to the “customer” are

assumed to be equal.
Inventory Analysis

Cost of transportation
3
According to Kruse (2007), the average mpg for a heavy-duty diesel truck with a weight

of 60,000 pounds is 6.2 miles per a gallon. 60,000 pounds equals 27,215 kilograms,

dividing our original weight of our object (0.226 kg) will give us 8.304e-6. Finally,

multiplying this number by 139.52 (our distance of 865/6.2 mpg) gives us 0.00116

gallons per trip. This number represents the total amount of gas that it would take to

transport the 3D object from San Francisco, California to Tucson, Arizona. It would take

roughly 862 copies of the 3D object to consume a gallon of gasoline throughout the

entire 865-mile long trip.

Using the same model as above, we can estimate that transporting 226 grams of PLA

30 miles in would take up 4.019e-5 of a gallon of gas. It would take roughly 110,097

copies of the 3D object to take up an entire gallon of gasoline during transportation.

Cost of production of material

4
Vink (2003), states that the Gross Energy Requirement to produce one kilogram of PLA

is 82.5 megajoules. If we multiply this number by the 3D object’s weight, we find the

Gross Energy requirement to create the material required for one copy of the 3D object.

This number is 18.65 megajoules. As shown in figure 7, 54.1 megajoules of the 82.5

total megajoules are from fossil fuel energy.

4
Fig. 7 Vink (2003)

5
Frischknecht and Suter (2005), found that the total energy required to produce one

kilogram of petroleum-based polypropylene is 85.9 megajoules, with a CO2 emission of

3.4 kgCO2/kg-polymer. Multiplying this number by the object’s weight, we find the Gross

Energy requirement to create one the material required for one copy of the 3D object.

This number is 19.41 megajoules.

Cost of production of product

6
Song and Telenko (2017), gathered information on energy loss due to human and

machine errors in FDM printers. They ran experiments with varying human and machine

errors and found an average printing energy of 20.7 MJ/kg.

8
Hesser et all found tested seven different polypropylene composites and found that the

total energy consumption of injection molding ranged from 1.6 MJ/kg to 3.5 MG/kg. The

average of these two numbers, 2.55 MJ/kg, will be used for the final evaluation.

Printing Production Waste

The addition of supports when printing the object used up about 20 grams of PLA. By

using the information above we can calculate the amount of energy used in the process

of adding supports. The amount of energy wasted comes out to 1.65 megajoules.

Disposal process of object

8
According to Choi and colleagues (2018), when disposed of in a landfill, polylactic acid

(PLA) has a carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of 2.16, or 2.16 kg CO 2 eq. This

means that the amount of carbon dioxide released when their 5.56g PLA pellets were

disposed of in a landfill is equal to 2.16 kilograms.

9
According to the United States environmental protection agency (2015), the net

landfilling emissions for PP is 0.04 MTCO2E/Short Ton Converting to kilograms gives

0.000044 MTCO2E/kg, meaning that for every kilogram of PP, it gives off 0.000044

emissions of carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, I do not have the experience or the knowledge to interpret either the

articles that these numbers came from. I cannot be sure if I have used the information

from these articles correctly.

Environmental Impact

Transportation Cost

As expected, the environmental cost for bringing an object with such a small weight was

miniscule, with the total gas added to the trip of bringing the 3D project from San

Francisco to Tucson Arizona being 0.0016. This amount of gas required would become
significant later on, with 862 copies of the object adding only another gallon of gasoline

to the trip.

Material Production

The amount of energy required to produce one kilogram of PLA is 82.5 megajoules,

while the energy required for one kilogram of polypropylene is 85.9 megajoules. When

calculated, making the 3D model requires 18.65 and 20.7 megajoules of energy using

PLA and polypropylene respectively.

A positive of additive manufacturing that is often said is that it does not produce nearly

as much waste as it traditional manufacturing methods. This is true, however, using

significantly more energy than traditional manufacturing methods almost defeats the

purpose of not wasting materials, even though you are not wasting materials, you may

instead be wasting energy. Therefore, it is important to additive manufacturing that it

can use both less material and less energy.

Product Production

According to Song, Telenko, and Hesser, the average amount of energy required for an

additive printing print is 20.7 MJ/kg, while the average amount of energy required for

injection molding lies between the range of 1.6 and 3.5 MG/kg. This is a significant

difference, with an FDM print requiring at least 5 times more energy than a

manufacturing job using injection molding. This difference will become even more

significant as the number of manufactured models increases.

Disposal of objects
Assuming that the interpretation of both articles is correct, I am surprised at how much

more carbon dioxide emits from PLA. However, it would not be fair to make a

comparison between the two method’s materials while uncertain about the disposal,

therefore I will omit it from the final evaluation of all stages.

Figure 2. Amount of megajoules per kilogram for FDM vs Injection Molding

Interpretation/Conclusion

Figure 3. Evaluation Chart of LCA stages for Injection Molding and FDM (higher score

means less environmental impact).

Method Column1 Material Production Printing Process Printing Process Waste Overall Summary Score
Weighting Coefficient 0.33 0.33 0.33
Injection Molding 1 2 2 1.65
FDM 2 1 1 1.32

From the information available, injection molding appears to have less of an

environmental impact when producing the small dog statue than FDM. The energy
required to produce the different materials for the two methods was closer than

expected, with PLA for FDM requiring only 3.4 less megajoules per kilogram of material.

Injection Molding required far less energy than FDM when making one kilogram of the

product, with FDM requiring about 8 times as much energy. The printing process waste

was negligible, with it only adding 1.65 megajoules to FDM.

Overall, I think that this was a fair comparison, I used different materials for each

method, however the materials are commonly used for each method. I would have

included the disposal of each object in the final evaluation, however, I could not find

sources that had a model or figure that could be used to convert the data into a

somewhat accurate number. I did not know how to interpret the information that I did

find, therefore including said information felt inaccurate and unfair to the evaluation.

Leaving out the disposal feels unfair as well, if I had to do it again, I would have asked

for instructors help in finding the information.

The first competing objective that motivates the use of AM that comes to mind is the fact

that AM makes producing custom objects much easier. I did not include the process of

producing the different parts of the machines used in FDM and injection molding,

however, this would have had an impact on this objective. Injection molding machines

are much more expensive than the average commercial use 3D printing machine.

Injection molding machines also require specific molds, which are very expensive.

Therefore, AM is still a preferable method when creating small custom parts such as the

dog statue.
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