Additive Manufacturing Power Consumption Measurement

This project was commissioned to measure the power consumption of various additive manufacturing machines available in the School of Applied Sciences and Engineering (SASE) Laboratory located in B140. Details pertaining to this process, including experimental design, operation, and analysis are detailed in this report. There are two outcomes of the experimental work carried out; it is established that: (i) the characteristic initial energy consumption of Stratasys F370 is 1.5 kWh; and (ii) the characteristic initial energy consumption of Stratasys F770 is 4.5 kWh. Two equations are derived which can be used to measure the energy consumption for any part fabricated using these to Stratasys 3D-printers. The important contribution of this work is that the experiment carried out does not need to be repeated; rather, it provides the initial energy consumption of the two Strastasys technologies, and hence provides the “technological behaviour” of these machines, from which any printing energy consumption can be obtained. While this is the immediate contribution, the long-term contribution is that the energy estimation becomes (i) an input to costing the printing of jobs submitted to the printers; (ii) becomes a “gateway” to Environmental Impact Assessment for Additive Manufacturing that at are FDM-based.