Effects of infill patterns on part performances and energy consumption in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene fused filament fabrication via industrial-grade machine

The industrial applications of Additive manufacturing technologies and systems are quickly increasing due to the high flexibility in the part design allowing for mass customisation and reduction of material usage. Besides the absence of manufacturing tools permits a reduction of the time to market. Despite these relevant advantages, building time is generally high and it can typically determine significant energy consumption. Several studies investigate the effect of infill patterns on material mechanical properties to address the design of deposition patterns but these works do not take into consideration relevant aspects related to the manufacturing stage, such as the energy consumption, both the building paths and time. The choice of the infill pattern greatly affects the balance amongst part performances, energy and material consumption. On the other hand, a reduction of the deposited material can effectively reduce the building time and then the process energy. In the present paper, an index that quantifies this balance for a largely used Additive Manufacturing technology is introduced. For this purpose, an experimental investigation is carried out by monitoring the process energy during the manufacturing of specimens characterised by different infill patterns. Then, physical and mechanical properties are measured to compose the proposed index.