Eco-materials in Additive Manufacturing: A Comprehensive Approach to Environmental Issues
摘要
Fabricating three-dimensional products from computer-designed digital models has expanded into numerous applications in variety of fields, particularly in rapid prototyping. Additive manufacturing enables the production of affordable, lightweight, and complex components tailored to customers’ needs, which are often too difficult or expensive to build using traditional methods such as molding, milling, or machining. This chapter focuses on the recent advances in additive manufacturing technology in the context of sustainable production methods. The chapter discusses the characterization of eco-materials used as inks, including polymer, metal, ceramic, and concrete-based materials and their composites, and the use of waste materials as more sustainable inks for additive manufacturing. In recent years, many companies have been exploring the use of waste materials in additive manufacturing, and there has been a gradual increase in their scale, from desktop devices to printing metal bridges and housing structures. Sustainable production methods have drawn the attention of polymer chemistry and many related scientific fields, particularly in the context of a circular economy. The analysis shows that there is a greater need for eco-materials in today’s market and additive manufacturing technology must adapt to consumer preferences. There is a growing demand to expand the range of metal alloys, ceramics, concrete, and composites towards more sustainable custom-designed materials with a high strength-to-mass ratio.