Energy Savings for Sustainability of Machining Process

Processing of metals in industries is lifeline of economy of country, which helps to shape the country. Energy saving in this process is attributed to both the parts ie process of machining and energy consumed in machine tools itself. The process of material removal had experienced lot of improvements in last few decades. This consists of developments in pre-machining processes, metal cutting methods and developments in cutting theories and cutting tools. Cutting fluid is one of challenging field to yield more favourable results. Manufacturing practices beyond its existing limits, process and machine automations, using the previous data for improving machinabilities, optimizing through relative benchmarks (a market driven schemes) shall lead the manufacturing speed to a new high. Adaptibility of manufacturing set up to absorb new requirement will also be a controlling factor for acceleration of manufacturing processes. This paper discusses the efforts to reduce the energy to produce a product. Various methods are discussed to minimize the energy consumed for driving the machine components such as spindle, feeding device, lubricating system, cutting fluid system, indexing and tooling management, speed and feed controlling devices etc. Different requirements such as friction energy in braking action, speed reducing or cushioning will also consume certain amount of energy during its operations. Therefore one has to understand the various types of energy flows and classification of energy forms used from place to place. Study of constructional features of machines brings a lot of opportunities for savings in energy. The concepts of material handling, fluid handling like hydraulic and pneumatic circuits, lubrication system, shall also provide the opportunities for savings in energy consumption. Energy used for working of accessories whether they are required at that particular moments needs to be considered from time to time. There are few more methods for locating the chances for arresting the energy wastages and reducing specific energy consumption referring a particular process or function. Previous data generated for similar functions can be referred for comparison and efforts can be added to reduce the requirement of energy. Efficient and effective utilization of equipment shall open a fresh path for finding the energy reductions. Sustainability of machining processes can be ensured for future using the lean energy utilizations for productions. Authors have explained the live cases to demonstrate reduction in energy consumption. Few potential guidelines are also narrated in this line. Further few cases are discussed from literature survey which support and will help to pursue the target.