Strategies for Minimum Energy Operation for Precision Machining

TLDR

Green machine tools require novel design, production, and operation approaches to achieve energy savings and reduce environmental impact. This work outlines three projects: (i) studying how process parameters affect end‑milling power consumption using force and process‑time models with experimental validation. The projects employ process‑time minimization to reduce energy per unit, model kinetic‑energy recovery systems to quantify recoverable energy, and evaluate MTConnect interoperability to integrate sensors for a unified energy‑performance monitoring platform.

Abstract

The development of green machine tools will require novel approaches for design, production and operation for energy savings and reduced environmental impact. We describe here work on three projects: i. influence of process parameters on power consumption of end-milling using force and process time models with experimental verification. Process parameters are chosen to minimize process time since power consumed by a machine tool is essentially independent of the load and energy per unit manufactured decreases with process time; ii. KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) for machine design and modeling the integration of a recovery system into a machine tool to calculate the amount of energy that could be recovered, and whether the environmental benefits are significant; and iii. evaluation of interoperability solutions, such as MTConnect, as tools enabling a standardized plug-and-play platform to integrate sensors with a unified monitoring scheme to achieve improved energy performance.