A power assessment of machining tools

Abstract

Energy conservation is becoming a more important ideal in today's society, due to the increasing awareness of environmental and economic impacts. This project experimentally measures the power consumption, which is related to the energy consumption, of machines in the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity, in order to determine the energy cost of the machines. This project then compares the results found experimentally to the theoretical minimum energy consumption in order to reference the measurements to the ideal energy consumption. Finally, this project attempts to find documentation of these energy costs in order to project the results found experimentally onto machines not physically available for measurement. This project found that the machines in the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity used more energy than was necessary while running, due to the sometimes large amount of power needed to run the idle machines. The specifications given by the machine's manufacturers were adequate to estimate the maximum power requirements. Combining these estimates with the motor properties allowed one to estimate the power requirements of both unloaded operation (while the machine was idle) as well as loaded operation.