Optimisation of Cutting Systems

HYDAC – your partner for energy-efficient solutions in cutting systems.

02/11/2021 3 min Share article on LinkedIn Facebook Xing Copy page url

Customer Success Story Presses & Forming Machines

Optimisation of cutting systemsHYDAC – your partner for energy-efficient solutions in cutting systems.

In the cutting process of industrial bar-cutting systems, precision and efficiency are the top priority. These characteristics require a powerful and dynamic process to ensure an exact cutting length.

The challenge

Our customer, a German machine and system manufacturer for cutting technology, creates stationary cutting systems with performance-controlled fixed displacement pumps. Because of the constant rotational pump speed, the efficiency of the pumps is not optimum in the case of small conveyed volumes. Furthermore, the motor runs in standby mode in cycle pauses – a factor that leads to high energy needs. Elevated heat ingress into the hydraulic system increases the need for cooling. There is also a large noise load during operation, which significantly worsens the working conditions in the system surroundings.
To achieve an energy saving of at least 30%, it was essential for the specialists to improve the system design. Our customer’s main concern was to optimise the performance of the sheering movement and to realise the auxiliary functions in a compact modular design. At the same time, the valve control needed to be simplified and implemented without elaborate proportional technology. In the interest of conservation of resources, reducing the oil volume in the hydraulic tank/system was also found to be advantageous. Cooling was also to be avoided, in order to save energy and costs. Equally, the generation of noise needed to be lowered as much as possible to create better working conditions for the employees.

Increasing efficiency and optimising costs in the cutting process with the variable-speed drive from HYDAC

Working with the customer as a partner, HYDAC found what needed to be done: with HYDAC’s variable-speed hydraulic drive solution, the previous motor-pump group has now been replaced with a servo-controlled double internal gear pump. In this system, the necessary flow and required hydraulic pressure can be supplied as needed by altering the rotational pump speed and selecting the pump combination. The simple design with few components and the optimised interaction of working processes results in shorter cycle times. The higher rotational speed also compensates for the reduced pump size. This results in a more compact design and thus a lower weight. At the same time, the greatly simplified valve technology replaces the proportional valve technology. Using accumulators also guarantees the fluid power supply of the auxiliary equipment. Subsequently, the process-based power consumption reduces the power dissipation to a minimum, so the need for a cooling system is eliminated entirely.

The result

With our clever HYDAC solution, our experts exceeded the customer’s expectations. Thanks to the variable-speed drive solution, HYDAC was able to reduce the drive power by as much as 50% (from 20 kW to 10 kW). At the same time, the oil volume of the hydraulic tank dropped from 450 to 200 litres. The reduction in noise generation – from 90 dB to below 75 dB – significantly improved the working conditions. The need for complex proportional valve technology could also be eliminated. In addition, cooling of the system is no longer necessary. The desired optimisations of the cutting and positioning functions could be surpassed by this energy-efficient solution.

Optimisations in cutting and in feed:
Pressure peaks smoothed by optimised switching of the depressurised circulation and control of the electric motor. The new system generates low pressure losses, as no proportional valves are used.