Valland demonstrates recycled automotive scrap aluminum as viable LPBF feedstock in ToZero project

Valland, an Italian additive manufacturing company, has completed the ToZero project, demonstrating that aluminum scrap from automotive body-in-white production can be converted into powder suitable for laser powder bed fusion. The project, funded under Italy's Accordi per l'Innovazione program, involved Valland developing LPBF process parameters for AA5083 powder recovered from the recycling stream. The company printed a structural connection node called the "Voletto" as a physical demonstrator, achieving topology-optimized mass reduction from 1.68 kg toward a 0.8 kg target. A life-cycle analysis per ISO 14040/44 standards showed process optimization reduced the component's carbon footprint by roughly 73%.

This project addresses a persistent tension in metal AM: the gap between sustainability ambitions and production economics. Recycled aluminum feedstocks have long been discussed as a pathway to lower-cost, lower-carbon AM, but real-world validation has been scarce. Valland's work with AA5083 - a marine-grade alloy not typically used in LPBF - shows that recycled material can print without hot cracking and meet mechanical targets. However, the project also surfaced a hard constraint: recycled AA5083 prints significantly slower than commercial AlSi10Mg, the dominant LPBF aluminum alloy. This productivity gap is the real barrier to industrial deployment, not material quality. The finding aligns with the broader industry pattern where materials governance - understanding how feedstock variability affects process windows - matters more than raw machine capability. For automotive, where cycle time and cost-per-part dominate procurement decisions, a 73% carbon reduction is compelling only if it does not come with a proportional throughput penalty.

Valland has done the hard work of proving technical feasibility and quantifying the sustainability upside. The practical next step is closing the productivity gap - either through process parameter refinement, machine modifications, or alloy adjustments that bring recycled AA5083 closer to AlSi10Mg print speeds. Automotive buyers evaluating this feedstock should ask for throughput benchmarks, not just carbon footprint numbers. The ToZero project is a credible data point, but it is not yet a production-ready solution.