Electric sustainability analysis for concrete 3D printing machine

Abstract: Nowadays, manufacturing technologies become more and more aware of efficiency and sustainability. One of them is the so called 3D printing. While 3D printing is often linked to plastic, the truth is there are many other materials that are being tested which could have several improvements over plastics.One of these options is stone or concrete, which is more suitable the architecture and artistic fields. However, due to its nature, this new technology involves the use of new techniques when compared to the more commonly used 3D printers. This implies that it could interesting to know how much energy efficient these techniques are and how can they be improved in future revisions.This thesis is an attempt to disclose and analyze the different devices that make up one of these printers and with this information, build a model that accurately describes its behavior.For this purpose, the power is measured at many points and later it is analyzed and fitted to a predefined function. After the fitting has been done, an error is calculated to show how accurate the model is when compared to the original data.It was found that many of these devices produce power spikes due to its nonlinear behavior. This behavior is usually related to switching, and can avoided with different devices.Finally, some advice is given focused on future research and revisions, which could be helpful for safety, efficiency and quality.