Fusion 360 Blog: 3D printing is often viewed as an environmentally friendly manufacturing method because of its reduction in waste material. It’s also shaking up supply chains by allowing localization, consolidation, and reduced inventories. However, every manufacturing process has an environmental impact, and additive manufacturing is no exception. In this article, we’re going to look at the FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) process and how making changes to your workflow could reduce your parts’ impact on the environment.
4 comments:
I think this article does an excellent job of addressing the many aspects of what makes something “sustainable” and “environmentally-friendly.” Thankfully, sustainability is being talked about a lot more as a requirement in manufacturing and building processes. Unfortunately, sustainability is still not a major factor in theater production processes. However, it is good to see that Autodesk is putting out articles like this that make sustainability a very realistic and possible goal. I particularly like how they broke down what makes something sustainable into three categories that have to be considered, lifecycle, material choice, and power consumption. Each of these three categories are really critical to consider in the creation of any product, and oftentimes these categories are overlooked and something is just considered “green” when it is not plastic. Power consumption is definitely a category that is rarely included in the definition of whether or not something is green, so I was glad to see it included as a factor here.
Additive manufacturing has taken the world by storm, especially with so many inexpensive at-home 3D printers available for purchase these days. These tools are also especially helpful for many industries, namely through the ease of prototyping components, making temporary or long-term replacement parts for some machines, or even just making objects which would be difficult to create otherwise. However, as with most things, there is a negative cost to these processes. This article outlined a couple of these negative impacts and gave tips on how to adjust your workflow to make your additive manufacturing more environmentally conscious. Though the tips are small, minor changes and adjustments you can make, they can still make a difference. If every single person who operated any sort of additive manufacturing device made these small adjustments, especially people or companies who regularly print multiple items, multiple times a day, the change would be much more evident. In the current day and age, where we have nearly used this planet to death, it is important to be as environmentally conscious as possible. Even small things, as menial as being conscious of what material you use or how much power you use with your 3D printer, can make a difference, and do not take much effort.
Although it was my impression that this article was going to highlight the negative effects of using 3D printing, it in fact only discussed how the misuse and disposal of materials would impact the environment. Although it is very important to educate your users of possible ways they may misuse their product or how they might improperly dispose of their product, the title of the article did not seem to convey that. I think that a better title for this article would be ‘Misuse of 3D Printing Causes Environmental Concerns.’ This would truly convey what they are discussing in the article. As for the article, it gave you some bare bones information like ‘use the right materials’ and ‘find out how to throw away your waste responsibly.’ This doesn’t necessarily help the reader understand which materials they might want to use for their projects nor does it help them understand how to throw anything away. It only gives them the suggestion to do it.
I am not too familiar with 3D printing, and I thought this article did a great job to inform people on how to properly and effectively use 3D printing in an environmental way. It addressed the misuses often made that defects 3D printing to be environmental, and discusses the steps and measures to look out for in the production process to avoid. I really enjoyed the layout of the article as well. It addressed the three main issues in the introduction and had a section for each following. It made it easy to read and understand, even for someone with no previous experience in 3D printing. I found it interesting, however, that these were not things people looked out for before. For example, I would expect people to check the density or the environmental material choice before going through printing a project to make sure their result is solid and ready to use. This would also save them a lot of time and money so they do not have to keep reprinting for trial and error.
Post a Comment