Energy Consumption And Cost Evaluation Of Laser Metal Deposition Process

Manufacturing is one of the key sectors for wealth generations in any society and has vital impact in production,economic growth,value added,employment creation and poverty reduction.In China notable?s development of manufacturing sector has been witnessed since the mid-1990 s as results of economics reform.The reform has transformed China into one among the most competitive manufacturing nation in the world and the world.In recent years the growth rate of manufacturing sector in has been witnessed to decline as an effect of highly increasing in manufacturing cost,strong energy demands and energy shortages.In this research work,Laser Metal Deposition technology has been chosen for studying energy consumption and cost elements involves in Additive Manufacturing.Energy consumption models and manufacturing cost models have been developed to make analysis.An experiment and market survey conducted to collect data,during the experiment energy consumption of machines divided into different stages that machines pass through during manufacturing process.Also manufacturing cost analysed based on inputs(cost variables)involved in manufacturing process,cost of inputs were measured based on activity based cost(ABC)and time driven based cost(TD-ABC).The results were analysed using statistical package software called MATHMATICA and MINITAB.The results showed that the major stage of energy consumption in LMD technology is printing stage which represents 47 percentages,followed by warming and set-up stage 42 percentages.Also results show that putting machine in On-State,when manufacturing work involves production of more than one product can help to save 40 percentages of the total energy that could be consumed if the machine was put on Shut-down state.For manufacturing cost the results show that machine is the major cost contributor represents 61 percentages of total manufacturing cost followed by labour 15 percentages.Both machine and labour are Time Derived Activity Based Cost(TD-ABC).Therefore efficiency of energy consumption in LMD manufacturing process and cost minimization can only be achieved by adopting the best manufacturing technique which helps to reduce manufacturing time.