The first two parts of a new International Standard for the environmental evaluation of machine tools have been published by ISO. The new standards propose to analyse machine tools with regard to the delivered functions to highlight the commonalities in the wide variety of existing machine tool types.
ISO 14955-1, Machine tools – Environmental evaluation of machine tools – Part 1: Design methodology for energy-efficient machine tools, addresses the energy efficiency of machine tools during their working life. The standard identifies the main functions and machine tool components that are responsible for energy demand during the use phase. These components are then compared with previous components or with the state-of-the-art for their future improvement.
ISO 14955-2, Machine tools – Environmental evaluation of machine tools – Part 2: Methods for measuring energy supplied to machine tools and machine tool components, supports the energy-saving design methodology according to ISO 14955-1 by providing practical methods for measuring the energy supplied to machine tools.
Ralf Reines, Convenor of ISO/TC 39/WG 12 that developed the standards, said, “This is, to my knowledge, the only standard concerning this topic that is tailored for machine tools.”
“It covers the topic in a way that it can be applied to each and every machine tool, despite the fact that the product group of machine tools is extremely diverse, e.g. different technologies (such as milling, turning, grinding, laser processing, forming), processing of material (metal, wood, plastics), sizes (to produce parts the size of a tooth or to process gears for windmills of 10 m in diameter),” Reines said.
“The standard focuses on the relevant energy users to achieve a higher environmental performance without losing in technical possibilities.”
ISO 14955-1 and ISO 14955-2 were developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 39, Machine tools.