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Today’s environmental and social challenges demand action. As technology experts, we are committed to accelerating the world’s transition to Responsible Manufacturing with industrial 3D printing. This podcast delivers insights into projects, concepts, and ideas on how to make Responsible Manufacturing the new normal. Meet Björn, our Head of Sustainability, and his guests. from customers, suppliers, research institutes, NGOs, and EOS colleagues. Join us on this exciting journey of exploring Responsible Manufacturing!
Hello, and a warm welcome to episode number 6 of Blueprint, our responsible manufacturing video blog. My name is I'm heading the sustainability department at EOS, and I'm the host of this video blog. Today, we talk about the EOS carbon calculator and how this tool helps to calculate a carbon footprint of a 3 d printed part. This tool was developed by an interdisciplinary team and 2 of the colleagues we have here today. My first interview partner is, Lea Stegeman.
Björn:Lea. Thanks for taking the time and being with us today. Can you briefly introduce yourself and what your role is at EOS?
Lea:Sure. I'm part of the sustainability department and also was part of the project team that created the carbon calculator the past one and a half years.
Björn:Perfect. Thanks a lot. To start off, can you explain what is a carbon footprint?
Lea:Sure. A carbon footprint is a number or a value that is attached to the so called greenhouse gas emissions that a product, a project or a company emits. These gases are climate impacting, and so it's good to know the number and where you stand on this.
Björn:Okay. Interesting. And what's included in a carbon for Fresnel? Where are the boundaries?
Lea:Sure. It includes all the greenhouse gas emissions. So there's methane, there's carbon dioxide, and a few others. And they're all calculated in carbon dioxide equivalents to have one number. The scope normally depends, but it is usually cradle to gate.
Björn:And why is it important to know what the carbon footprint is of a product, for example?
Lea:I'm sure we can all agree that climate change is a huge topic and that we all wanna work towards a world in which that is less of a problem. And so it's good to know where you stand and know your status quo in order to know where you need to work towards and also know how you then can improve your footprint in the long run.
Björn:Okay. So can you give us an example to be a bit more concrete?
Lea:Sure. It gets more and more important. Lots of countries nowadays put a price tag on carbon emissions in order to help internalize the cost. So having external costs of pollution of the environment and internalize them by making producers pay for these emissions. And if you take the example of Germany, there is quite a few industries now that have to pay a carbon price.
Lea:The current one in 2023 is €30 per ton, and this is relevant for things such as petrol, diesel, oil and gas.
Björn:So this is imposed by law, right? So will it help, calculate the comfort? Will it help to also identify levers to improve?
Lea:Most definitely. Once you know where you stand, you also know where to go, and you know where your hotspots are. So this is something we've seen also in one of the examples we've already calculated. We had a project together with our customer, Umarvo, who's producing eyewear. And for their product, we saw that the main levers are with energy and material.
Lea:So there you would know what to improve first and in that way have a win win situation, improving the environment as well as your costs.
Björn:And thank you for mentioning, the Umarvo project. It was actually the first episode that we had in the blueprint. A video blog as well, where we found out that the 3 d printer production is 3 times more sustainable than the traditional manufacturing. Curators, where or when in the product development process does the carbon calculator come into play?
Lea:Well, preferably at the very start, but basically anywhere within your application process, We try to help our customers by knowing what the footprint of a product or an application is to know what to do then. So we identify hot spots and then see how we can consult them and improve wherever their hot spots are.
Björn:I think in everyday's private life, sustainability for most people play an important role. There's an important role today. Now we're in a b to b, so business to business environment, so to say. Do we see interest from our customers in this topic?
Lea:Yeah, for sure. We've seen this particularly at the Formnext Fair that we attended in Frankfurt last year where we talked to lots of customers, and there was quite a huge interest of various customers that we spoke to. So I would say the consciousness, has been rising in the past.
Björn:And which customers or which industries are mostly asking for it?
Lea:It's really from various industries, but I would mostly mention the consumer goods industry as they are in the b2c business and have lots of their customers asking for more responsibility. And so they've been the ones we've been talking to quite a lot.
Björn:Okay. Thank you very much, Leah. Interesting project. Great tool. And I'm now looking forward to get more insights actually on the metrics, on the data, on the quality, and how it really works, with our colleague Namir.
Björn:So stay tuned for the second part. Hey, Namir. Nice to meet you. Good to see you. Thanks for your time and being with us here today.
Björn:I just talked to Leah about the benefits of carbon footprint calculation and how this can help to establish responsible manufacturing. I'm now really curious to get more insights into the tool. But before we do that, may I please ask you to introduce yourself and your role at EOS?
Nameer:Sure. So I'm Nameer, and I'm a consultant here in Additive Minds EMEA. What I do is I support customers in their AM journey to achieve success in additive manufacturing.
Björn:Great. Thanks a lot. So to get started, what does make the EOS Carbon Cake Conator special? I mean, I saw there's a few other tools out there as well, but what is it that makes our tool outstanding in your eyes?
Nameer:Yeah. I think there are 3 three concrete features behind that. Number 1 is the fact that we are the only ones who are using carbon pricing, carbon shadow pricing, which is we are giving a monetary value to the carbon footprint emissions. Number 2 concrete feature that we have over the others is the fact that we are a machine manufacturer. So naturally, we can measure our data.
Nameer:And then number 3 is the fact that the calculators out there and also R2 can take you to step 1. But in order to really go for customized cases, go to step 2. You really need to call to action for sustainability consulting. And we have a complete team on sustainability consulting that is helping customers on this based on the data that is being generated from the calculator.
Björn:Looking forward to see it in a second, but can you tell us what features does it have?
Nameer:Sure. So the thing that we are most proud of is the data matrix. We'll explain that in more detail once I'll be showing you the live demo in which we actually show the complete data origin of all the datasets that we have for our calculator. The second thing is the power of tool or the engine of the tool, where we have the scenario analysis, followed by analytics, and then followed by a hotspot analysis to a call to action. So we try to close the loop there.
Björn:Okay. Can you show us how it works? Sure.
Nameer:100%. So this is basically the overview of the tool, and this basically shows the complete process steps that a product goes through in an additive manufacturing process. So you can see the powder manufacturing, you can see logistics, and then you can also see some details on powder processing and powder manufacturing.
Björn:Mhmm. That looks very comprehensive. How much effort, how much time does it take on average?
Nameer:Yeah. So if I see this example so this is a demo part that was printed on m 290 with 316l powder. And all I need in order to feed into this tool is the build time data. Once I have the build time data, it takes 1 minute to enter the data and just everything is then calculated spontaneously. So hardly in 2 to 3 minutes, you have your carbon footprint emissions for your application.
Björn:And what emission, are included in in in the calculation?
Nameer:So we are focused on carbon equivalent emissions, and, actually, there are some out of scope values as well in our calculator, but our focus is on pay to ticket.
Björn:And out of scope values is what?
Nameer:So we use specifically the word on the tool currently not available. And this is basically two reasons. Number 1, we want to show the transparency to our customers to explain to them what is included in the total carbon footprint emissions. And number 2, we also want to show the vision to our customers that from cradle to grave, we want to go to cradle to grave as well in order to focus the complete footprint of the application.
Björn:So is it planned then also to include other data, and and is there a road map for that?
Nameer:Rightly so. So we have already it plans in place. So number 1 is we have already we've already done some calculations on one of the machines that we have in our portfolio. Similarly, what we are doing is we're also collecting data and doing night cycle assessment on our powders that were previously taken from academic papers.
Björn:Mhmm. Okay. So if I understood it correctly, you can calculate the carbon footprint. Is it also possible to do other analysis or, other calculations as well?
Nameer:Sure. That's actually a very good question, and this comes to the what if question. Right? And the tool has the power under scenario vertical to really play around with a what if scenario. So for example, if I see this gecko over here, and this gecko was printed on PA 11 powder.
Nameer:And one of the questions that might come with our portfolio also having PA 11 climate neutral powder is what is going to be the carbon emissions if I were to print the same part in p 11 climate neutral? So that is something that you would actually select from the what if scenario to kind of calculate and get an understanding on what would be the carbon emissions for such a scenario. Similarly, for designers, you could really play around with volume reduction. So in case you could reduce volume reduction to 10%, could really see right away the impact on the reduction on carbon footprint. Mhmm.
Björn:So it seems that there are a lot of, nevers, so to say, to work on your carbon footprint. How does it work actually? What can you can you do we show that to the customer as well?
Nameer:Yes. From analytics, we then basically close the loop by bringing the carbon pricing into the phenomena. So what we discussed at the start, we make that as an integral part of the costing tool. So carbon pricing over here becomes one of the levers of the cost per part. Similarly, we then have the possibility to play around with other sensitivity levers, to really play around in order to have a green business case, and then also play around with more than one sensitivity levers.
Nameer:Now to your question on levers, what we have noticed in terms of data collection is and also doing analysis, is there are 3 main clusters in which carbon footprint is the biggest impacting reason for that. And those three reasons are basically energy, powder, and logistics. And DC are usually the biggest drivers in impacting the carbon footprint of the application. So this hot spot analysis basically highlights the biggest driver. So in this case, it's energy, for example.
Nameer:And then it tells you some basic guidelines on how you can improve your carbon footprint of the emission.
Björn:Okay. That that's amazing. It looks really like a very comprehensive tool and analysis. Is there any help we are offering to our customers to go through this?
Nameer:Yeah. And if you see the button at the bottom right corner, basically, that's a call to action to get in touch with consulting team. And this comes back to one of the value adds that this tool has, is there is a sustainability team working at the back end for this tool. So coming back to the point on going from step 1 to step 2, for customized cases, for specific cradle to grave solutions, for life cycle analysis, this is where our sustainability consulting team comes and plays a part. So if you click on this button, no matter where you are in the globe, so if you are in North America, our North American editor of minds team will get in touch with you.
Nameer:If you're in EMEA, then most likely me and my team will be there to support you. And if you are in APAC, then the APAC team will be there to support you
Björn:on these topics. Mhmm. Very interesting. One question coming back to the data because I think that's crucial part of the calculator. Where does it come from, and and what about the quality of the data?
Björn:Can you say something about that?
Nameer:Sure. So if I click on data metrics, we have and I'll switch to polymer quickly. Doesn't matter if it's polymer or metal. For both the cases, we have a complete product life cycle. And this product life cycle then highlights for each machine and each material the impact that for that vertical, is it being measured, is it being is it coming from an assumption?
Nameer:Or is it coming from an academic paper or from a research basis?
Björn:Okay. Can you elaborate a little bit more about that? I mean, collecting of the data. Is that research paper, assumptions? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Nameer:Being a machine manufacturer, we naturally have possibility to measure some data. And that is what measurement means. Then on top of that, we are doing our own research in doing life cycle assessment of our materials that we have on our portfolio. Then on top of that, some of the things that are data gaps that remain, we then take some assumptions coming from academic sources and literature.
Björn:Okay. And that all is presented in a marriage transparent way so that also the customer can see where does the data come from and maybe also about the quality because I think that that is very important. Correct. Yes. Okay.
Björn:So now if anyone wants to to use it or to test it Right. How can they reach out?
Nameer:So first of all, the tool is available on EOS store. Secondly, there is a blog post that we have published. The link for that would be in the show notes, and you can read that and get in touch with us. There's always a possibility to get in touch on LinkedIn for with us, or send us out an email at info@us.info.
Björn:Okay. Perfect. So we will put all these, links into the show notes so that people, know how to reach out to you or to the, to see the carbon calculator. Right. Namir, that was really interesting.
Björn:Thanks a lot. A great tool. I'm looking forward to further versions of it because we will develop it further, I guess. Definitely. And with that, let me thank you for your time and, yeah, for being with us today.
Björn:Thank you very much.
Nameer:You're welcome. I have a t shirt for you. Thank you.
Björn:It is for you. And wait. Farmingbird.
Nameer:Thank you. Always good to have you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,