Preliminary Environmental Assessment of Electrical Discharge Machining

Manufacturing processes, as used for discrete part manufacturing, are responsible for a substantial part of the environmental impact of products, but are still poorly documented in terms of environmental footprint. This paper presents the first results of a data collection effort, allowing to assess the overall environmental impact of three types of Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) processes: die sinking EDM, wire EDM and micro EDM. After the inventorisation of all process flows using the CO2PE!-methodology, a subsequent impact assessment analysis allows indentifying the most important contributors to the environmental impact of EDM. Finally some improvement potential is sketched.

ISBN:978-3-642-19691-1

Jaar van publicatie:2011