Manufacturing - reducing metal forming losses and lightweighting through additive manufacturing
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Technology Description
Reducing yield losses in manufacturing (e.g. sheet metal in the automotive industry) would reduce material demand and in turn emissions from material production. Additive manufacturing, a digitalised production process in which three-dimensional objects are produced by successively adding material by layer, by its nature leads to minimal material losses compared to processes that cut an object from larger pieces of material. It also facilitates design of lighter-weight parts.
Relevance for Net Zero
Manufacturing yields are already quite high for many manufactured products, although improvements could be helpful in applications with high losses currently, such as vehicles. While improvements can help reduce material use and thus emissions, the impact on total emissions is relatively low given that collection rates for pre-consumer scrap are high, the quality of the scrap is high (due to good sorting) and recycled production emits a relatively small fraction of the emissions of primary production. Improvements in terms of additional potential for lightweighting, on the other hand, can reduce total demand and thus help contribute to emissions reductions.
Key Countries
United States, Germany
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