Energy Consumption in Additive Manufacturing of Metal Parts

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used to fabricate metal part by using high energy beam to fully melt feed stock materials layer-upon-layer directly from a digital CAD model. Energy consumption in metal AM could not only affects the sustainability of the process itself but also influences the microstructure and mechanical properties of the fabricated components. This paper first summarizes the current research status of energy consumption on machine and process levels. On the machine level, energy consumption by subsystems of the AM machine tool such as high energy beam generator, control system, cooling system etc. and at different operation modes are discussed. On the process level, the energy flow distribution in typical AM processes is first analyzed, then research efforts to quantify the energy flow in AM processes are highlighted. The life cycle assessment of energy consumption of AM metal parts along with energy consumption reduction strategies is also thoroughly discussed.