Life Cycle Engineering Tool Preliminary Test: An Environmental and Economic Comparison of a Brake Caliper

3D printing offers several opportunities for design engineers, including the ability to create complex shapes without tooling and produce products with material only where required. However, one of the most critical concerns is the energy and cost needed for producing feedstock. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Costing (LCC) analyses are necessary to evaluate whether the environmental and economic impacts of Additive Manufacturing (AM) are better than those of traditional manufacturing (TM). Although several studies in scientific literature aim to compare AM with other methods, this assessment is typically performed using general-purpose tools. To this end, the paper presents a comparison, based on LCA and LCC, between AM and TM for a motorbike brake caliper. For AM, the analyses are carried out using a specific life cycle engineering tool developed in a previous study. The analyses for TM are performed using commercial software tools. The comparison does not consider other factors, such as quality and performance. In this scenario, TM is still the best option.