Production-phase carbon footprint of photopolymer resin workflows for direct-print orthodontic aligners: A screening carbon-footprint assessment

Direct-print aligners are widely presented as the environmentally preferable alternative to thermoforming, but which part of the process governs the carbon released during manufacture has not been established. Four commercial printer–resin workflows were modelled: Graphy Tera Harz resin on a Uniz NBEE (A) and an Asiga MAX 2 (B), the LuxCreo iLux Pro as a closed chain (C), and Graphy resin on a DentaFab Sega Pro (D). Energy, material and throughput data came from the manufacturers. Production-phase CO2e per aligner was propagated through 10,000 Monte Carlo draws, with the resin emission factor sampled across its full published range (3.0–6.5 kg CO2e/kg) and the thermoformed comparator represented as a distribution. Mean footprints were 0.043, 0.036, 0.089 and 0.020 kg CO2e per aligner (95% uncertainty intervals were 0.032–0.056, 0.026–0.047, 0.077–0.101 and 0.016–0.025), against a thermoformed median of 0.190. Direct printing was the lower of the two in every paired iteration. Resin dominated, contributing 41–79% of the total; solvent added a further 41% in the one workflow using it, while electricity of all kinds accounted for 19–36%. Thermoforming would match direct printing only at series lengths of 45 to 202 aligners, far above the 14–30 of clinical practice; under the most unfavourable resin factor the margin narrowed but did not close. Material efficiency, not energy sourcing, is where reductions are available.