Economic and Environmental Analysis of Hybrid Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing with Metal Forming Operations

This work aims to evaluate the economic and environmental performance of hybrid additive manufacturing (HAM) chains with metal forming operations in comparison with conventional manufacturing approaches. The approach integrates processes such as Wire-Arc Directed Energy Deposition (DED-Arc), machining, and incremental sheet forming to combine material deposition, shaping, and finishing within a single processing chain. To support this, a process-based cost model (PBCM) was developed to estimate production costs by linking process parameters with technological and operational variables and implementing computer-assisted modeling of the processing chain for identification of the production costs and corresponding key cost drivers. In parallel, a cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate environmental impacts across the stages of the HAM chain. The results indicate that direct labor, material, and machine usage are the primary cost drivers in the HAM chain. Compared to conventional chains of machining from solid or die casting, HAM achieves high reductions in production cost, from 67.8% to 84.5%, and in environmental impact of up to one order of magnitude, due to lower material consumption and independence from dedicated tooling. Overall, this work provides an integrated framework for the economic and environmental assessment of HAM, laying the foundation for future industrial implementation.