Investigating the Energy Consumption of the PECM Process for Consideration in the Selection of Manufacturing Process Chains

The initial planning of manufacturing process chains provides the opportunity to sustainably influence the energy requirement for the manufacturing of industrial products by selecting the process chain with the lowest energy consumption. However, the task is still challenging due to the need for energy consumption data of manufacturing equipment. In this paper, the analysis of the energy consumption of a manufacturing process is illustrated by the example of the Pulse Electrochemical Machining (PECM) process. A comparison of two machine tool generations of the same manufacturer shows the improvement in energy consumption. Based on the information gained from the analysis, an approach for the provision of energy consumption data is presented.