A study on impact factors of the energy consumption of the fused deposition modeling process using two-level full factorial experiments

Abstract

Current studies show that the extent of the ecological benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) against conventional manufacturing is case-specific. In terms of energy performance, deeper investigations of mechanisms between parameters and energy consumption of AM processes are currently emerging research tasks. Focusing on the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process, we have designed and carried out two-level full factorial experiments for five impact factors: print speed, layer thickness, number of parts, part size, and support structure. Through 32 experiments, the effects of the impact factors on the total and specific energy consumption of FDM are analyzed.