Environmental sustainability and economic assessment of additive manufacturing: the influence of polymer type and layer definition

Additive manufacturing (AM) has gained widespread attention due to its potential to reduce material waste, lower energy consumption, and a wide variety of applications. However, its environmental and economic sustainability is widely debated. This study carried out a Life cycle assessment (LCA) and an economic analysis (EA) to evaluate the environmental sustainability and economic aspects of five different thermoplastic filaments at three distinct layer definitions. The environmental assessment of materials with identical geometric conditions indicated that impacts increased significantly with printing resolution, primarily due to longer printing times and higher electricity consumption. Global warming (GW) ranged from 4.80E-02 kg CO2 eq for polylactic acid (PLA) in draft mode (DM) to 1.51E-01 kg CO2 eq for acrylonitrile butadiene-styrene (ABS) in ultradetail mode (UM). Across materials, polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) and PLA generally exhibited lower environmental impacts, while high-quality polyvinyl chloride (FLEX) showed higher impacts, within the conditions analysed in this study. The EA reported that FLEX was the most expensive material, ranging from 2.02 to 2.99 EUR per printed item and from 0.60 to 0.15 EUR per layer, while PLA showed the lowest costs ranging from 0.70 to 2.57 EUR and 0.21 to 0.13 EUR per layer. The results should be interpreted as a comparison of filament-printing combinations under fixed geometric and process conditions, rather than as a general ranking of material sustainability. This study contributes to the scientific literature by proposing a new perspective on the sustainability assessment of AM materials through the synergy between LCA and EA. Graphical Abstract