A Holistic Approach for Cost Analysis in Industrial 3D Printing

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator takes carbon emissions from additive manufacturing projects into account alongside key cost metrics so you can comprehensively assess your organization's additive expenses.

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(Image: EOS.)

(Image: EOS.)

Additive Manufacturing Cost and Carbon Calculator

Most manufacturers are cost-conscious and understand the mounting importance of sustainability. Additive manufacturing (AM) helps address both issues: It is cost-effective when strategically implemented, and it is more sustainable when parts are carefully designed with emissions and waste in mind.

Feedback from EOS customers has highlighted some specific cost analysis concerns: For example, we commonly heard that cost-per-part (CPP) was too high for large-scale production in regulated industries. Feedback like this — as well as our commitment to enabling responsible manufacturing — spurred our Additive Minds Consulting team to develop a new cost and sustainability analysis solution.

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator is the fruit of those labors: It is designed to enable more precise cost calculations, facilitate greater transparency for both EOS and our customers and contribute to overall emissions reduction. It represents the latest effort in our ongoing campaign to aid our clients’ achievement of their sustainability goals.

Key features and benefits

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator is intended to help manufacturers uncover and assess all notable factors driving CPP and other cost-related key performance indicators (KPIs) and can also calculate the emissions from various greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalents).

It provides a transparent overview of CPP from machines, materials, post-processing steps, consumables and other overhead costs. Users can estimate CPP for metal or polymer parts based on EOS-collected data or calculate at a 95 percent accuracy rate via simulation using data from EOSPRINT, Magics or another software solution from EOS. The primary CPP data is displayed in pie chart and bar graph formats.

The calculator also dives deeper with more granular data:

  • Top variables driving CPP (e.g., part volume, build rate and material price).
  • Sensitivity analysis for how broad correlations between CPP and key variables increase or decrease.
  • Cost matrices to identify precisely how to adjust impact variables to reach a target CPP.

For CO2e analysis, the calculator provides heat map visualizations that identify emissions sources from specific materials or applications and illustrate the costs stemming from these emissions. Furthermore, it offers prescriptive recommendations on how to reduce emissions based on an organization’s specific situation.

All this data is summarized in generatable reports, which can be saved locally or in the cloud for future reference and, if necessary, editing.

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator is built to address the big picture by serving a bottom-line need: accurate analysis of CPP and critically important related metrics. At the same time, the tool is designed to account for the many varied factors that influence costs either positively or negatively, no matter how common or niche their use may be.

Calculating for CO2 equivalents (CO2e)

While putting the EOS Cost & Carbon calculator together, the Additive Minds team realized the tool could easily measure 3D printers’ use of key resources. This information supplied the variables necessary to solve various greenhouse gas (GHG) emission formulas and determine the specific sources of CO2e emissions for individual AM-tooled parts.

For example, we can determine that the build process accounts for most of the energy consumption in the example below for a part tooled on a metal 3D printer using EOS NickelAlloy IN718, as follows:

(Image: EOS.)

(Image: EOS.)

This information also informs EOS’ work on new systems, materials and solutions to make additive manufacturing more sustainable in the future. The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator projected that exposure technology (still in development) has the potential to notably lower energy consumption per part by about 20 percent.

Driving sustainable strategies

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator is steadily being improved by the Additive Minds Consulting team: We work hard on measuring internal data and obtaining as much external data as possible from third-party partners. Understanding the exact breakdown of an organization’s additive manufacturing costs serves as an efficient route to actionable insights.

Knowing CPP, CO2e and other key metrics is a firm foundation upon which to build concrete plans to change processes that are wasteful and/or unsustainable — and maintain or improve operations with favorable KPIs. For example, if the calculator identifies the laser powder bed fusion system as a key area around which to focus, it will also reveal opportunities to increase energy efficiency by illuminating multiple potential courses of action: Users could switch to carbon-neutral materials for certain builds, use less carbon-intensive methods elsewhere in the life cycle or change part design parameters, to name just a few possibilities. To supplement the calculator’s recommendations, our Additive Minds experts offer consultations for CPP and emissions analytics to help identify the most sensible options for any given situation.

Sustainability’s mounting importance is far from a flash in the pan: In fact, government and industry regulations regarding CO2 and other GHG emissions are likely to tighten in the years to come, and manufacturers will further adjust their practices to account for this.

The EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator offers users a window into the granular details of additive manufacturing’s financial and resource costs. This transparency offers funds- and resource-saving opportunities and can guide organizations toward more sustainable and cost-efficient additive operations.

To learn more about the EOS Cost & Carbon Calculator, visit the Additive Minds Academy here to start your free trial.