Industrial energy optimisation: a laser cutting case study

In an increasingly technological world, energy efficiency in manufacturing is of great importance. While large manufacturing corporations have the resources to commission energy studies with minimal impact on operations, this is not true for small and medium enterprises (SME’s). These businesses will commonly only have a small number of laser processing cells; thus, to carry out an energy study can be extremely disruptive to normal operations. Since rising global energy costs also have the largest impact on small businesses who lack the benefit of economies of scale, they are simultaneously the most in need of improvements to energy efficiency, while also facing the strongest practical barriers to implementing them. In this study, a laser processing energy analysis methodology was designed to run simultaneously with normal operation and applied to a laser shim-cutting cell in a UK-based SME. This paper demonstrates the methodology for identifying operating states in a production environment and Specific Energy Consumption and Scope 2 CO₂ emissions results are analysed. The Processing state itself was the most impactful on overall energy performance, at 55% for single sheets of material, increasing to 71% when batch processing. Generating idealised data in this production environment is challenging with restrictions to isolating variables, these “real-world” limitations for conducting system energy analysis simultaneously with live production are also discussed to present recommendations for further analysis.