machine tools

Over the last two decades, themes such as resource scarcity, environmental pollution and rising commodity prices have gained increasing importance in the design of automotive industry production processes. As a result, the pressure on car manufacturers to plan their production facilities according to energy efficiency criteria is constantly rising. At present, machine tool suppliers still provide insufficient data to support purchasing decisions based on energy efficiency aspects. A case study conducted with Daimler AG explores a car manufacturer’s specific information requirements with respect to energy efficiency. Furthermore, an approach for the integration of energy data in the product data sheets of machine tool suppliers is presented.

The mould and die industry is characterized by permanently rising competitive pressure. Competitiveness has to be increased with higher productivity through declined machining times and costs as well as the same or higher quality of the products to be machined. A key technology to reach these objectives is the 5-Axes HSC machining of sculptured surfaces, whose potentials are currently used but not bailed out. Therefore the main objective of the BRAGECRIM pro-ject “Holistic Optimization of Sculptured Surface Manufacturing” (HoliMan) is to identify and exploit the production accuracy and efficiency increasing potential. In this project Brazilian and German researchers work together on the holistic optimization of sculptured surface manufacturing by considering the significant impacts of the manufacturing process on the work-piece quality.