Evaluation of energy usage in feed drive systems

Abstract

Since the energy consumption of production facilities occupies the great portion of the energy consumption in the manufacturing, the energy saving of the production facilities is important. Thus, this study focuses onto the energy consumption of the feed drive system and aims at reduction of its energy consumption. Feed drive systems are widely used for various industrial facilities such as NC machine tools, hence the energy consumption of feed drive systems are directory related with the energy consumption in the manufacturing. In order to achieve the purpose, the energy consumption of the feed drive system is clarified by using the experimental apparatus single axis feed drive system and the energy usages are also estimated by simple mathematical models. The measurement tests are carried out with both of ball-screw and linear motor drives, under several friction characteristics, and several driven mass to investigate the influence of the factors to the energy consumption of the feed drive system. As the results, it is clarified that the energy consumption is influenced by the drive system, friction characteristics of linear guide and velocity loop gain.