International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research
Abstract
Electricity consumptions have attracted global interest in recent times. This is attributable to the increasing technological advancement and new machines and materials development hence, an urgent global call for energy efficiency and sustainable manufacture. The electricity consumption in the manufacturing sector especially at the process level stages is an increasing trend. This is partly due to the energy demand of the auxiliary units and machine features incorporated into the machine tools at the design and manufacturing stages and on the other, as a result of increased production activities (increased product demand) during the use phase. This resulted in an increased embodied product energy that affects the cost and life cycle assessment of the product. In view of this economic and environmental objectives, it is paramount to investigate the energy consuming activities during machining (i.e. tip energy and zero load cutting energy) in order to optimize electricity demand at the secondary processing stages. In this work, the electrical energy demand of the auxiliary units and machine features of three different machine tools were investigated and characterized. This is required in order to encourage symbiotic and sustainable manufacture of products for resource optimization and also to determine specific areas for energy savings. It was observed that the electrical energy demand for non-cutting activities dominate the machining processes at more than 70% and the zero load cutting energy, which is machine dependent, is also about 14%. A step change in axes motor designs for CNC machine tools could facilitate energy reduction in this direction
