Taken seriously from an early stage
Yes, we do something – especially when it comes to the efficiency improvement of our products. And we have been since the mid-1990s: as part of our environmental management system, we undertook to save resources and to use raw materials and energy as sparingly as possible. This is a matter of course for us. Today this commitment is documented by many examples: Energy recovery for overspeed test stands, minimum quantity lubrication, modern remote maintenance concepts or the use of efficient drive technology. Our customers profit from efficient and advanced solutions covering all aspects of balancing and diagnosis technology.
Anything that weighs less needs less energy for movement – what is not there cannot incur any costs. In our practice this means: consistent light construction and the reduction of the mass to be moved as the basis for use of smaller drives. These consume less energy, accelerate better and in this way also reduce cycle times. The use of minimum quantity lubrication enables the machine to dispense with the complete coolant supply and preparation: no pumps, no cooling, no filtering and no costly environmentally compatible disposal. The workpieces can be processed further without cleaning, and the swarf is sent for recycling without further treatment. These and other measures have reduced the energy consumption over two machine generations by 50%.
A further example is our new vertical balancing machine. By reducing the cycle time by 8 seconds
every minute, this results in a saving of approx. 20 hours over 19 shifts of 8 hours. Rounded up to a year with 45 weeks productivity, this produces an overall savings of well over 900 hours. This significantly improves the energy balance of the machine, and also boosts productivity by 13%.
In the case of balancing machines using large masses, it is extremely beneficial to use drive amplifiers equipped for energy recovery. By feeding current back into the grid, energy costs can be reduced significantly. In the case of extensive time trials on overspeed test stands, the energy consumption for the drive of the test specimen is very high – particularly if ventilation losses occur.
AC servo-motors make it possible to feed the energy back into the grid during braking operation, resulting in substantial benefits in terms of operating costs. The reduction is normally approx. 85%, and under the most favourable conditions even as high as 95% are possible.
Wherever possible, we have designed our machines to use pneumatic or electro-mechanical lifting, clamping and adjustment elements. These consume significantly less energy in comparison to hydraulic drives, since the consumption in stand-by mode is almost zero. The potential saving is around 35% in comparison to machines of previous generations.
On the basis of our environmental guidelines, we undertake in the production of our products to dispense with materials which are harmful to the environment or human health. We do our best to use natural resources and energy sensibly, avoid producing waste and encourage recycling of reusable raw materials. One example of this is the use of mineral casting: its mechanical properties of outstanding damping characteristics and high thermal stability make this material absolutely ideal for balancing machines. Its resource-saving production, with over 30% less primary energy used in comparison to conventional materials such as grey cast iron, saves costs in production, thereby relieving the burden on the environment.
Many of our measurement devices and controls no longer need to be maintained on site by our service technicians. Fault diagnosis and rectification, or the installation of software updates and upgrades, can be carried out in a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly way by means of an online connection.
Our machine analysis tool Fingerprint is even more advanced and more comfortable. It use the existing CAB measurement technology to analyse the signals of the balancing machine and to evaluate the measured vibration pattern. This enables the accurate status monitoring of the balancing machine based on the actual usage conditions and quick and target error analysis.
