GREEN PRODUCTION SUPPLEMENT ECO DESIGN DIRECTIVE/BLUE COMPETENCE


consumption in 2007, of which 70% was used by electrical drive systems. So in-use energy consumption, taking in drives, coolant pumps and standby power draw and so on, is the key focus for machine tool improvements.


A draft standard on machine tool eco- design has already been published – ISO/DIS 14955-1 Machine tools – Environmental evaluation of machine tools – Part 1: Design methodology for energy-efficient machine tools – and CECIMO says that it supports the efforts of the responsible committee, ISO TC 39 WG12. Standardisation underpins CECIMO’s focus now on “the definition and the industrial validation of the environmental evaluation criteria for machine tools”. Says Dr Wilfred Schäfer, executive director of VDW, CECIMO’s German member association: “The uptake of ecodesign measures in the industry, be it under regulation or self-regulation, will be possible only if standards are available in the marketplace. Standards are a pre- requisite to lend credibility to manufacturers producing energy-efficient products and prove energy performance to consumers.”


STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT The European Commission has also mandated European standardisation organisation CEN to develop standards in support of legislation and it also mandated a study via the Eco Machine Tools project (www.ecomachinetools.eu), with CECIMO and ISO TC 39 WG12 feeding into this. The Eco Machine Tools report was published last year (http://is.gd/RT9lat) and the European Commission has now set in motion an impact assessment study, undertaken by Bio Intelligence (www.biois.com), which commenced in January of this year. CECIMO says that the Eco Machine


Tools study and its own investigations converge towards the conclusion that it is “an enormous challenge to set up standardised criteria for the evaluation of energy efficiency applicable to a large variety of products (machine tools), which at the same time can bear comparable results”.


www.machinery.co.uk May 2013


Lighting


(working chamber) 0.1%


Lift pump


(cooling lubricant) 1.8%


Transformators 1.8%


Control


components 2.4%


Cooling control cabinet (fan) 3.0%


Chip


conveyor 3.0%


High-pressure pump (cooling lubricant) 19.5%


Exhaust (working


Power supply 4.9%


Closed-loop cooling system 19.5%


Motor spindle 18.9%


Hydraulic pump 9.1%


Drives (axes) 12.8%


chamber) 3.0%


The various consumers of electrical power in a metalcutting


machining centre. Only 20% of the power consumption is directly related to the process; 80% is for auxiliary components – Eco Machine Tools report


There is a large range of product types (around 400 categories and 2,000 models of machine tool) that exhibit divergent technical features, while this is complicated by the fact that product technical characteristics are determined by and customised to users’ needs. Machine tool design parameters are affected by a complex interplay of factors and this makes comparison of machine tools with different technical characteristics extremely difficult, it is said. Because of this, CECIMO says that ‘one size fits all’ energy-efficiency measures may “become futile and ineffective”. A measure that improves the energy efficiency in a machine tool may generate a contrary result when applied to a machine tool of the same type, but which features different technical characteristics and applications. If they are not chosen carefully, measures for improving energy efficiency may have a negative impact on the performance of some machines, the organisation says.


Explains Jiri Vrhel, technical manager at


SST, CECIMO’s Czech member association, and expert to the CECIMO energy efficiency working group (CEEWG): “CECIMO’s investigations have shown that only selective measures tailored to individual cases and taking into account individual conditions can lead to real improvements in energy efficiency. The common view of the CEEWG is that deciding whether or not a solution is suitable for a given application should be left to the discretion of the machine designer.” The difficulty is amply underlined by Heidenhain in an article on page 10. In the case of regenerative power supplies, the benefit, or otherwise, could vary from job to job,depending on the number of toolchanges. So, even if a machine is tailored for a particuilar application at the outset, subsequent applications over the life of the machine tool may be very different. That being the case, the benefit or otherwise of any measure taken to, theoretically, improve energy efficiency will vary.


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