Approaches for an energy and resource efficient manufacturing in the aircraft industry

Over the recent years, several studies have pointed out the impact of manufacturing on the environment. Especially machining offers great potential for the conservation of energy, resources and the reuse of raw materials. This article gives an overview on the approaches that are currently under investigation at the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools with the aim of improving these aspects. The approaches cover regrinding methods for worn tools, recycling of titanium chips and process planning for hybrid process chains. In the first part of the article, a novel process chain for the automatic regrinding of cemented carbide tools is presented. It is shown that production costs can be reduced significantly, as well as the required energy for production of carbide tools. In the second part of the article, approaches for the recycling of titanium chips from machining processes are described. The last part focuses on the resource and energy efficiency of process chains that contain additive and subtractive processes.