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Assessment Of Environmental Performance Of Rapid Prototyping And Rapid Tooling Processes, Yanchun Luo, Ming-Chuan Leu, Zhiming Ji
Assessment Of Environmental Performance Of Rapid Prototyping And Rapid Tooling Processes, Yanchun Luo, Ming-Chuan Leu, Zhiming Ji
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works
A method for assessing the environmental performance of solid freeform fabrication (SFF) based rapid prototyping and rapid tooling processes is presented in this paper. In this method of assessment, each process is divided into a number of life stages. The environmental effect of each process stage is analyzed and evaluated based on an environmental index utilizing the Eco-indicators that were compiled by PreConsultants of the Netherlands. The effects of various life stages are then combined to obtain the environmental performance of a process. In the assessment of SFF processes, we consider the material use in the fabrication of a part, …