GF Machining Solutions joins the Blue Competence Machine Tools sustainability initiative
GF Machining Solutions has joined the Blue Competence Machine Tools sustainability initiative, after meeting the initiative’s pre-defined sustainability criteria for production and business practices. The initiative is in line with European policy objectives and highlights the machine tool industry’s commitment to contribute to the European Union’s climate and energy goals.
Criteria for Blue Competence Machine Tools partnership includes defining sustainability objectives and actions for products and personnel, applying sustainability criteria to every phase of a product’s life cycle, and providing product documentation describing resource conserving operational aspects and ensuring the resource efficiency of products. Furthermore, members must create concepts for professional and proper disposal of products at the end of their period of use, and members’ service offerings must include professional energy efficiency/resource conservation during products’ day-to-day use. Blue Competence Alliance Members declare their willingness to quantify the sustainability and sustainable effectiveness of their products and maintain management systems to set and monitor sustainability objectives, including a continuous improvement process. In addition, each alliance member assigns sustainability to a management member.
By meeting those criteria, GF Machining Solutions joins Blue Competence Machine Tool initiative Alliance Members in preparing to tackle the challenges facing the European machine tool industry.
Examples of GF Machining Solutions’ sustainability measures include:
- The Introduction of a new Econowatt smart module, which is already available on the CUT 1000, 2000 and 3000 and will be applied to all other EDM products. In addition the spark generators of the EDM machines are currently being upgraded from low efficient architectures towards the most energy efficient one, which is the resonant switching mode topology. This architecture achieves the highest cutting rates and thus lowers overall energy consumption from the time usage perspective as well as costs for our customers.
- On the Milling side, our Mikron HSM LP and LP Precision series’ new standby mode saves energy while the machine is idling; a new, efficient oil extraction system saves compressed air; a new chip management using frequency controlled pumps eliminates the need to con-stantly run the pumps at full power; and new light emitting diode (LED) lights save energy, too.
- Fully digitized, non-polluting and sustainable Laser texturing technology of the AgieCharmilles LASER products.
As a member of the Blue Competence Machine Tools initiative, GF Machining Solutions is committed to delivering cutting-edge technological and technical innovations that promote energy and resource efficiency.
