Is Additive Manufacturing Really That Environmentally Friendly?

World Earth Day had me thinking: is additive manufacturing really that environmentally friendly? According to this article by Roland Berger, the answer seems to be "yes if done in the right way".

One problem, at least for metal powder-based techniques, is in the preparation of the atomised powder itself.

Gas and water atomisation are pretty inefficient: not much of the kinetic energy from the gas or water jets causes the liquid metal to form into droplets and often only a select range from the as-produced powder size distribution can be used.

Centrifugal atomisation is an alternative approach developed and patented in the 1980s by Nuclear Metals Inc. While the process is energy-intensive — it requires a disc rotating at very high frequencies — it is somewhat more efficient, and it generates a narrow particle size distribution. Interestingly, flywheels for energy storage appear to operate at similar rotational frequencies.