Awareness of Energy Consumption in Manufacturing processes

Several literature have reported on the low level of awareness for energy consumption in manufacturing processes. This paper presents results aimed at providing some evidence for this low level of awareness. The results of energy consumption as measured by various metering devices on different manufacturing equipment are presented. Predictive equations of energy consumption are also presented. The low awareness and meaningfulness of this results among a spectrum of students and manufacturing practitioners is reported to indicate the existence of a gap between the measured/predicted results and the human perception of energy consumption. Reasons for the gap between measurements/prediction and perception as well as methods for bridging the gap are proposed. The results are evidenced by experiments in turning, milling and rapid prototyping and have been conducted on manufacturing equipments which include manual desktop machine tool, desktop CNC machines and industrial scale manual and CNC machines