A Decision Method to Improve the Sustainability of Post Processing in Multi Jet Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Abstract The improvements in terms of sustainability achievable by means of additive manufacturing processes have been widely investigated in the literature. Nevertheless, less information exists on the economic, societal and environmental impacts of the postprocessing phase of additively manufactured parts. The present paper analyses the case of sandblasting in Multi Jet Fusion process chain. The main impact factors of this operation are examined to show their importance on the sustainability of the production. The thermal bleeding defect is deepened, due to its high influence. A descriptor to aid the decision-making about build orientation is proposed and applied to a real case.