Energy recovery and efficiency optimisation in a wood cutting machines

Wood cutting machine process is characterized by multi axes high acceleration and deceleration phases and requires relevant electric energy amount to operate. Moreover not all the energy involved in the process is really used as a part of it is usually wasted and lost during movement phases. In particular the electrical power generated during the deceleration phases is significant and it is usually transformed into heat using braking resistance banks. As a consequence conditioning systems are usually adopted to remove the heat produced during the wood cutting process and to avoid electrical rack failure due to over-temperature operations. These solutions imply a significant energy waste which decreases the efficiency of all the wood cutting process. The present paper proposes an energy recovery system which can be adopted and installed also on existing machines and which allows to store the amount of energy produced during deceleration phases and to use this energy during the acceleration phases of the machine axis. A prototype has been realized and tested.