In industrial practise, decision makers should know performance characteristics, cost- and energy-related impacts for choosing the most suitable manufacturing technology for a specific product. In this context, the present work focuses on a technical, economic and environmental evaluation of the Selective Laser Melting processing of 316L stainless steel flat washers compared with the industrial CO₂ Laser Cutting. The SLM process allows obtaining components with improved mechanical performance, with an increase of 15% and 48% in tensile strength and hardness, respectively. While surface roughness is more than 11 times worse than the hot rolled samples. The economic analysis showed the greater cost-effectiveness of the LC technology, ensuring the production of a single component at the price of 0.63 €, against 45.13 € necessary for the SLM, which is mainly due to the high consumption of the assistant gas (i.e. Argon). The health and environmental impacts evaluation showed that the LC is around 2.5 times more eco- and human-friendly if compared with the SLM process. In particular, the most relevant damage effect is given by the depletion of the fossil fuels due to a high electricity consumption. However, the observed trend between the two technologies appears to be very similar, thus revealing the possibility of reducing the impact potentials associated to the SLM process with its continuous technological advancements, by making the process itself able to move from small to medium or high volume production rates.

在工业实践中，决策者应该了解性能特性，与成本和能源相关的影响，以便为特定产品选择最合适的制造技术。在此背景下，本工作着重于与工业CO ₂相比，对316L不锈钢平垫圈的选择性激光熔化工艺的技术，经济和环境评估激光切割。SLM工艺允许获得具有改进的机械性能的组件，其抗拉强度和硬度分别增加15％和48％。而表面粗糙度比热轧样品差11倍以上。经济分析表明，液相色谱技术具有更高的成本效益，可确保以0.63欧元的价格生产单个组件，而SLM所需的成本为45.13欧元，这主要是由于辅助气体的大量消耗（即氩气）。健康和环境影响评估表明，与SLM流程相比，LC的生态和人类友好性高出约2.5倍。特别地，最相关的破坏效果是由于高电力消耗导致化石燃料的消耗。然而，