Evaluation of environmental sustainability in additive manufacturing processes for orthopaedic devices production

Sustainability impact assessment of additive manufacturing represents one of the work packages (WP5) of the European Union Horizon 2020 project “Driving up Reliability and Efficiency of Additive Manufacturing” (DREAM). Additive manufacturing is a versatile technology consisting in melting metallic powders to produce objects from 3D data, layer upon layer. Additive manufacturing applications in industry range from automotive, biomedical (e.g. prosthetic implants for dentistry and orthopedics), aeronautics and others. One of the main target of WP5 is to assess the environmental sustainability of DREAM products and processes, conducted with laser-based powder bed fusion additive manufacturing systems through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Environmental impacts on different impact and damage categories due to manufacturing, use and end of life of the designed solution have been assessed adopting IMPACT 2002+ method.