Self-replicating three-dimensional printers allow the manufacturing of parts necessary for the fabrication of cloned machines. This paradigm is particularly attractive to desktop printers, as it fosters the distributed manufacturing principle.

This study assesses the endpoint environmental impacts of a self-replicating desktop three-dimensional printer through a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment. The impacts of self-replication are measured over generations under two different initial hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that human health and environmental indicators, which are mainly driven by the machine and energy, can be mitigated by reducing the building time and extending the machine lifespan. On the other hand, material consumption governs the resource depletion of the process.

The analysis of the equipment shows that the replicable components only account for a small percentage of the machine materials. Accordingly, different initial hypotheses on their manufacturing determine minor changes in the total environmental impact of the process.

Self-replicated machines are less sustainable than original ones with regards to human health and ecosystem quality indicators due to the long duration of the printing process. On the other hand, the design freedom of the three-dimensional printing allows for a reduction of the part weight which brings benefits to resource depletion. In the examined machine, these variations are marginal due to the small number of replicable components. Over the iterations, the environmental indicators of the self-replicated machines tend to the same values regardless of the initial hypotheses. This fact allows for the estimation of the impacts of replicated machines even if accurate information on initial manufacturing processes is unknown.

自我复制的 3D 打印机允许制造制造克隆机器所需的零件。这种范式对桌面打印机特别有吸引力，因为它促进了分布式制造原则。

本研究通过从摇篮到大门的生命周期评估来评估自我复制桌面 3D 打印机的端点环境影响。自我复制的影响是在两个不同的初始假设下衡量的。

结果表明，主要由机器和能源驱动的人类健康和环境指标可以通过减少建造时间和延长机器寿命来缓解。另一方面，材料消耗控制着过程的资源消耗。

对设备的分析表明，可复制的部件只占机器材料的一小部分。因此，对其制造的不同初始假设决定了该过程总环境影响的微小变化。

由于打印过程持续时间长，自我复制的机器在人类健康和生态系统质量指标方面的可持续性低于原始机器。另一方面，3D 打印的设计自由度可以减轻零件重量，从而有利于资源枯竭。在被检查的机器中，由于可复制组件的数量很少，这些变化是微不足道的。在迭代过程中，无论初始假设如何，自我复制机器的环境指标都趋向于相同的值。这一事实允许估计复制机器的影响，即使有关初始制造过程的准确信息未知。