Energy Consumption in Milling as a Result of Different Machining Parameters and Tool Paths

Manufacturing processes have great economic importance since the first industrial revolution. Such activity, however, generates much waste and consumes a lot of energy, contributing to the industrial sector being responsible for the consumption of a third of all energy produced in the world. In response to increasing international pressures, the productive sector seeks to perform more energy efficient processes and to provide lower environmental impact. Companies that can implement sustainable strategies in their manufacturing processes can obtain a competitive advantage in the market. Among the different manufacturing processes, machining is of great importance due to its wide use, and milling provides versatility to manufacture different parts for the most varied industrial segments. This work presents a study that aims to increase the energy efficiency during milling operation by means of the appropriate determination of cutting parameters and tool paths. The evaluated parameters are: cutting speed, feed rate, axial and radial depths of cut. The variation of cutting parameters had a strong influence on the energy consumption, the manufacturing times and the rate of material removed. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the cutting parameters, a pocket was machined using the determined parameters, as well as the standard parameters indicated by NX and Fusion software applications. As a result, the parameters proposed in this research led to a reduction of 26.9% of electric energy consumed compared with NX software, and 36.0% compared with Fusion software.