The cost of additive manufacturing: machine productivity, economies of scale and technology-push

By Martin Baumers, P. Dickens, Christopher John Tuck, Richard J. M. Hague. 2016

631 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As part of the cosmos of digital fabrication technology, Additive Manufacturing (AM) systems are able to manufacture three-dimensional components and products directly from raw material and 3D design data. The layer-by-layer operating process of these systems does not require the use of tools, moulds or dies. Technology observers speculate that AM will have a profound economic impact on the manufacturing sector and indeed on wider society. By constructing a model of production cost for two different AM systems used commercially for the manufacture of end-use metal parts, Electron Beam Melting (EBM) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), this paper performs an inter-process comparison of cost performance. High specific costs, measured at £2.39 and £6.18 per cm3 of material deposited respectively, are identified as a central impediment to more widespread technology adoption of such additive systems. The research demonstrates differing levels of system productivity, suggesting that the observed deposition rates are not sufficient for the adoption of EBM and DMLS in high volume manufacturing applications. Despite the absence of amortisable tooling costs, the analysis also reveals that economies of scale are achievable in AM. The results reached are further discussed in the light of the varying strategic requirements posed by the market-pull and technology-push modes of innovation which are both found in the AM industry.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/751ca907ed453d527f0bd1ef0d5f0e26f257b168

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Citations in the corpus

The barriers to the progression of additive manufacture: perspectives from UK industry (2018, background): “In academic literature the cost implications of integrating AM into a business can be split broadly into either quantitative analysis of direct and indirect costs with respect to a case study part (Atzeni and Salmi, 2012; Baumers et al., 2016; Franchetti and Kress, 2017; Laureijs et al., 2017; Lei e”
Additive manufacturing: Challenges, trends, and applications (2019, methodology): “Baumers et al.89 developed a cost model to compute the overall cost involved in EBM and DMLS.”
Design for Additive Manufacturing (2019, methodology): “50) from 2003 [148] and for EBM and DMLS build plates with a variety of parts (Fig.”
Predicting the future of additive manufacturing: A Delphi study on economic and societal implications of 3D printing for 2030 (2017, background): “…manufacturing and the hype about this technology, there are no scientific studies available developing scenarios about the future of additive manufacturing from an economic and policy perspective, including predictions regarding the economic impact of this technology (Baumers et al., 2016).”
Life cycle assessment of wire + arc additive manufacturing compared to green sand casting and CNC milling in stainless steel (2018, background): “While such techniques may be more efficient in material consumption, its energy use per produced part is considerable (Baumers et al. 2016).”