Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : October 08, 2016 - October 10, 2016
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process of making three-dimensional solid objects from a digital model by adding layer-upon-layer of materials. Although AM is gaining growing interest from industry, the environmental effect of introducing the technology into current manufacturing processes has not been investigated. This paper evaluates the environmental load of AM process in automobile manufacturing and compares it with that of conventional processes such as metal stamping and casting. The result of the comparison shows that the environmental load of AM heavily depends on the type of modules manufactured. While main-body modules are suitable for other manufacturing processes such as stamping than the current AM technology, casting can be alternated by AM in terms of CO2 emission.
