Environmental Life Cycle Assessment
The Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluates CLASCO production routes across all use cases and life cycle stages. It follows ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 and identifies environmental hot spots in laser-based manufacturing and surface functionalisation.
Transport
Raw materials
Powder production
Additive manufacturing
Post-processing
System Boundary — Cradle to Gate
The system boundary covers raw material extraction, energy, chemicals, production, transport and waste burdens. It excludes the use stage, end of life and capital goods, including buildings and equipment.
Functional Unit
The functional unit is the production of components per build job (BJ), scaled to a product reference of 1 kg. Results are also discussed per kg to support comparisons across use cases, scenarios and literature.
Why we express results per 1 kg of product
CLASCO covers very different components — from a 2-part Lever Bracket to a 30-part knee implant. To compare their environmental performance fairly, we convert all results (e.g. carbon footprint) to a common basis: 1 kilogram of finished product. This makes it possible to see, across very different parts, which process steps offer the biggest opportunities for improvement.
In the CLASCO route the raw material extraction, the powder production and the inert gas use in laser post-processing have the highest environmental impacts.
The CLASCO production route reduces material waste, chemical hazards and negative environmental impacts during extraction compared to the conventional production route.