Advances in 3D printing is penetrating in many industries. It is changing the way of doing manufacturing business and people's life. Performing energy and related environmental impact analysis of this technology is necessary and profound. In this paper, energy modelling is studied for FDM printing from a life cycle perspective. For a typical FDM life cycle, the stages covered are material production, printing, post-processing and related transportation. For each stage, energy consumption is modelled and measures for unit energy consumption are also proposed to assist quick calculation of a life cycle energy consumption. Besides, the machines used in different stages are analysed and the main energy consuming components are summarised. Based on a sample part, preliminary calculation of its life cycle energy consumption is presented, showing that life cycle energy saving is possible, particular with collective efforts from different stages. This offers additional data to select an energy-efficient manufacturing process. [Received 29 April 2016; Revised 26 October 2016; Accepted 08 November 2016]
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Peng et al. (2017) studied this question.