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Lifecycle Analysis For Environmentally Conscious Solid Freeform Manufacturing, Yanchun Luo, Ji Zhiming, Ming-Chuan Leu, R. J. Caudill

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A lifecycle based process model for analyzing the environmental performance of SFM processes and SFM based rapid tooling processes is presented in this paper. The process environmental performance assessment model considers material, energy and disposal scenarios. The material use, process parameters (e.g. scanning speed) and power use can affect the environmental consequence of a process when material resource, energy, human health and environmental damage are taken into account. The presented method is applied to the SLA process and two SLA based rapid tooling processes. The method can be used to compare different rapid prototyping (RP) and RT processes in terms …