ReviewPolymers2024
Environmental Impact of Fused Filament Fabrication: What Is Known from Life Cycle Assessment?
Review in Polymers, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Tensile characterization and life cycle assessment of fungal-colonized 3D-printed PLA/wood biocomposites.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Sustainable Design and DoE-Based Optimization of Polymeric Systems for FDM 3D-Printed Indomethacin Amorphous Solid Dispersions.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Synergistic Advances in Additive Manufacturing and Surface Engineering for Polymeric Biomedical Devices.ACS polymers Au · 2025Review
- Influence of Layer Thickness and Extrusion Temperature on the Mechanical Behavior of PLA-Flax TPMS Sandwich Structures Fabricated via Fused Filament Fabrication.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Influence of Structural Optimization on the Physical Properties of an Innovative FDM 3D Printed Thermal Barrier.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This systematic review interrogates the literature to understand what is known about the environmental sustainability of fused filament fabrication, FFF (also known as fused deposition modeling, FDM), based on life cycle assessment (LCA) results. Since substantial energy demand is systematically addressed as one of the main reasons for ecological damage in FFF, mitigation strategies are often based on reducing the printing time (for example, adopting thicker layers) or the embodied energy per part (e.g., by nesting, which means by printing multiple parts in the same job). A key parameter is the infill degree, which can be adjusted to the application requirements while saving printing time/energy and feedstock material. The adoption of electricity from renewable resources is also expected to boost the sustainability of distributed manufacturing through FFF. Meanwhile, bio-based and recycled materials are being investigated as less impactful alternatives to conventional fossil fuel-based thermoplastic filaments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.