A comprehensive analysis of electric energy consumption of single point incremental forming processes

Production processes, as used for discrete part manufacturing, are responsible for a substantial part of the environmental impact of products, but are still poorly documented in terms of environmental impact. The present paper proposes a comprehensive energetic analysis of Single Point Incremental Forming Processes (SPIF). The three most commonly used machine tool architectures able to perform SPIF operations have been taken into account: a CNC milling machine, a six-axes robot as well as the dedicated AMINO machine tool were analyzed from an electrical energy consumption point of view. For all the setups, a working cycle time study and power study were performed. Moreover the contribution of each sub-unit towards the total energy demand has been determined. The influence of the most relevant process parameters (e.g. feed rate, step down), has been determined. The three setups have been analyzed in order to identify the solutions with the highest energy efficiency for SPIF processes and a set of potential environmental friendly process control strategies are proposed. Finally, a parametric model, able to predict the energy consumption at the varying of the process parameters, is proposed.