Development approaches for energy efficient machine tool structures

Based on Ecodesign Directive 2005/32/EC of the European Commission, higher energetic sustainability is actually the major task in production technology. In this paper approaches for higher energy efficiency on machine tool and production system level will be derived systematically and selected concrete solutions will be presented. The paper starts with an introduction to the Saxony excellence initiative eniPROD - a comprehensive project with focus on energy-efficient product- and process innovations in production technology. After that, the major part of the paper deals with efficiency increase by optimized interaction of the machine tool components on the respective higher system level. Therefore, in a first step influences on energy consumption in production are structured hierarchically. In a second step general aspects of machine tools and production systems efficiency will be discussed. Thirdly, selected solution approaches for machine tools will be addressed more in detail, especially mobility, miniaturization, autonomy and adaptivity as well as energetic interaction by reactive power compensation. Additionally it is shown how to use bionics for innovative solutions approaches