GREEN PRODUCTION SUPPLEMENT ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION
substantial cost savings. Companies in pole position will win.” German metalcutting machine tool maker Gildemeister AG (UK agent DMG/Mori Seiki, Coventry) is also an innovator in the market. “With our machines, you save up to 30% in energy consumption and, at the same time, you will also raise your productivity – directly from the factory, at no extra charge,” is the company’s claim.
The basis for this increased overall
efficiency is two-fold, according to Gildemeister AG. “With intelligent drive technology and the resource-efficient mechanical design of DMG machines, customers will benefit from significant energy cost savings over the life of their machines. “In addition, our software functions ‘DMG AUTOshutdown’ and ‘DMG GREENmode’ allow for customised shutdown settings, with the latter providing an efficient acceleration of cutting processes, using adaptive feed control,” it adds.
SAVINGS FIGURED OUT The company puts figures to its technology benefits. “In total, these measures can save customers an additional €4,100/year in energy costs.” That figure is based on a production operation running 52 weeks/year; 5 days/week; 2 shifts/day; with 1 hour for start-up/day, and using the latest German industry energy costs (put at €0.11417/kWh, according to
www.energy.eu). So far, 60% of Gildemeister AG’s machines can benefit from this type of saving, but the company’s aim is to roll this technology out to more in its range, it offers. As for the 30% figure, achieving this requires precise configuration of the machine and cutting processes by the end user, it does admit. But “energy use on our machines is reduced by 20%, on average, over the entire life of the machine,” claims the company. Last year, Gildemeister AG’s board of
directors set up a technology advisory board, which includes university professors and engineering experts, that is focused on energy topics. The company was already a member of ISO TC 39 WG12, the committee working on ISO 14955 ‘Environmental evaluation of machine tools’ (see page 6). Gildemeister is a particularly unusual case,
however, as the company also has business interests in generating and storing renewable
www.machinery.co.uk May 2013
Gildemeister AG (DMG/Mori Seiki, Coventry) is a keen proponent of energy efficiency, unusually also having a renewable energy generation and storage business activity, too
energy via its SunCarrier (solar cell carriers), WindCarrier (wind turbines) and CellCube (energy storage) technologies. And it is putting its technology into practice at its Bielefeld, Germany, manufacturing site. The operation consumes about 10 GWh annually. With an installed capacity of about 1 MW (peak capacity), solar and wind collectors produce up to 15% of the energy required at Bielefeld, generating a saving of around €150,000/year. Gildemeister Energy Solutions has similarly installed a CellCube FB 10-100, supplied with renewable energy from a SunCarrier 260 and a WindCarrier at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg, Germany, site. In this case, the set-up supports a six-vehicle charging station that can be operated around the clock. German sheet metal processing specialist
Trumpf, which has punch press, laser profiling, laser welding, press brake and material storage technology in its toolkit, lays out its environment-related benefits. Under headings of power, material, gases, consumables, water and floor space, the company underlines its efforts.
Under ‘power’, the company says that the optimised standby mode of its TruFlow laser reduces power consumption by up to 40%.
Friends electric
The replacement of hydraulics with electrically powered technology has been a pursuit for a while, but is gathering momentum, particularly in the sheet metal area. SafanDarley claims to be the inventor of the electric press brake, with its E-Brake series. These are up to 50% more energy-efficient than a comparable hydraulic press brake, it says. Amada, Bystronic and Salvagnini all unveiled electric press brakes at EuroBLECH last year (
www.machinery.co.uk/48881). Power press maker Schuler unveiled its servo-motor technology – ServoDirect – five
years ago and launched TwinServo Technology at EuroBLECH. As for fully electric metalcutting machines, MAG, for example, revealed its Specht 600 horizontal production machining centre at EMO in 2011. And machine ancillary suppliers, such as Röhm, Kitagawa and Roemheld, offer electric versions of previously hydraulic mechanisms that machine tool builders integrate into their products.
Automatic shutdown of laser resonators has long been a standard feature, it underlines, while recovery of kinetic energy has been standard since 1987. Trumpf’s new diode laser (used in welding),
TruDiode 3006, has power savings of 90%, compared to rod lasers with the same laser output, and its enhanced chiller in the TruLaser 3030 laser profiler reduces power consumption by up to 9,040 kWh per year (that’s €1,032/year at German energy prices). The optional universal interface to a central cooling system available for the TruLaser 5030 laser cutting machine can save up to 51,000 kWh annually, allowing the use of waste energy to heat the production building. And on its press brakes, by using modern drive technology, like the torque engine on the TruBend Series 7000, energy is only consumed if the press beam actually moves (see box item, below). Of course, the technology of fibre lasers has encroached on CO2
laser territory
increasingly, bringing with it large energy saving benefits. Last year, Trumpf highlighted that its TruLaser 1030 Fiber profiler with 2 kW TruDisk laser source used 40% less energy than a CO2
for example. ■
version at comparable laser power,
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