Do you guys think 3D printing is wasteful?

That's good... but what you're doing isn't science, its guessing

I prefaced this by calling it "wishy-washy". I figured it was understood that there was a huge margin of error here. At least I'm trying. So a $200 motherboard/cpu/RAM combo at $0.06 / kWh is anywhere from 1700-3300 kWh/kg. Using your weight, your micro-ATX board and the basics to make it work. Sorry that website I'm not affiliated with is so far out.

/u/zeehero said that a motherboard has a lot of "embodied energy". Yes, yes it does. You ran with it.

Really? Do you use your computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? When do you sleep? Eat? Shower? Work?

Yes, I do. You don't know how and what it's being used for. It's always on and always under a load. I don't know why you're arguing with me on how I use my computer. And I also said that this is my personal use case. Why can't you understand that I used average desktop power consumption for my base calculations even if I don't fit into this framework? This whole thing started because someone said a desktop can be way worse than a 3D printer (paraphrasing). For me, that's true. But I tried to quantify things further, state my assumptions and be completely transparent. The goal was that you take from it what you want.

Heck, even your sources are conflicting with each other, first you cite a study that says it is 50kgCO2eq to transport a (3kg) laptop to the consumer, then you tell me it it is only 1kgCO2eq to ship 1kg. This number is bogus too, since it assumes:

  • The filament producer lives on average 500 miles from you
  • The only energy expended is that of the airplane (do you live at an airport? Is the filament producer also at an airport?)

Now I'm convinced you're being pedantic for no reason. The paper makes this 50 kg CO2eq pretty clear. Any transportation costs related to manufacturing and part production went under part production (as per page 3, section B) meaning that "transport to customer" includes:

  • 50% air transport from China to Malaysia
  • 50% truck transport within China
  • Air transport from Malaysia or China to western or eastern US
  • 90% truck transport to customer (1500km)
  • 10% air transport to customer (1500km)

Do you see what a tiny fraction the final air transport is in this number? Saying that it should take 50 kg CO2eq to ship 3kg because this paper says so is pretty short-sighted. I looked up UPS and FedEx carbon footprint figures too. That 0.5 kg CO2eq figure is a bit out of date so I doubled it. Heck, quadruple it. I don't care.

I'm giving a 2000km air-range according to my first source which is more than anything sent from China anyway. And with ground transport coming in at 10% of that, I don't see why I'm using terrible, bogus numbers. The Dell laptop just has a LOT farther to go than filament manufactured on this continent. Lets quadruple things and use 2 kg CO2eq / kg of filament. It doesn't change anything so please stop calling my efforts bogus and incorrect. You seem to feel quite superior here (why?) and all I'm doing is trying to work things out.

I would actually argue that things could be much, much worse than your estimates. When Dell makes a computer, you better believe they're shipping everything ground, every time they can... its so much cheaper.

Again, this is actually in the paper.

For example, when I buy hotends in bulk from E3D, they come by air. Air shipment has 10-20x more CO2 emissions than sea shipment, per kg of cargo.

Again, this agrees with my first source on shipment methods / kg.

That means a 60 gram hotend requires more CO2eq to transport than a whole motherboard!

What's the point of this? If we're just talking about transportation footprint for a hot-end by air vs a motherboard by sea, it's comparing apples to orangutans. I don't see what you're going for here. Are you trying to say that shipping by air is less eco-friendly? I agree. So if anything, me calculating a 2000km range (or 4000km if you want to quadruple things) using only air transport within the continent is high - leaves room for all the ground shipment steps that are considerably cheaper from an environmental sense.

That doesn't mean that the 3D printer is more energy efficient, when it is being used.

Again, I was painfully clear on this from the start. I put average desktop usage at 8 hours per day which I don't think is particularly crazy. I also put 3D printer usage at what seems to be fairly typical if not high (again, think average user). If you want to have both running 24/7, of course the 3D printer has a higher cost. But what's the point of that metric? That was never part of this discussion since we're looking at the users in this sub in the hobby segment. We're trying to figure out which device is "greener" for real users. More specifically, greener over time. This is what pretty much all leaflets from any hydro/electricity company do to. They say how many kWh an appliance uses per year. This comes with the understanding that not all things are running 24/7 but instead come from average real-world use scenarios.

Run a 3D printer 24/7 and you get a footprint of 5.2 kg CO2eq / day. Run PLA instead of ABS according to my first paper and you get a possible footprint of 3 kg CO2eq / day. Run PLA without a heated bed and you get a possible footprint of 1.2 kg CO2eq / day. See how I'm intentionally going for the worst-case scenarios here? Now run a 150W desktop and you get 1.5 CO2eq / day. Run my desktop and you get 3.4 kg CO2eq / day. But who runs a 3D printer at full tilt for 24 hours? I'd say that 10 times out of 10, people are using their desktop more. So for a real-world case, the desktop probably has a higher footprint. I'm not sure why you can't see this? Is your desktop running more than your printer? If so, there's an environmental cost attached. That's all I took the parent comment to say. No further massaging and manipulating of numbers required.

CO2eq produced in the production of a PC should be prorated by the percent of time it is used as a hobby if comparing to a 3D printer in the hobby setting

Why? Making a desktop requires a footprint of X and making a 3D printer requires footprint of Y. You've spent this footprint simply by getting it. I'm mitigating this cost by stretching it over 4 years of ownership for both. This number doesn't care how much you use it within those 4 years. What does matter are the variable costs (electricity and other inputs like filament). You're saying that if I bought a 3D printer but never used it, my footprint is zero. Same for a computer - I bought one but never turn it on therefore my footprint is zero?

Give me a break. I don't feel this discussion is being productive anymore. Sorry to have taken your time.

/r/3Dprinting Thread