Green –Your Way

By Dan Hebert, PE, Senior Technical Editor

Over the last few years, green has become an all-encompassing and often meaningless marketing buzzword. But in the real engineering-based world of machine builders, robot builders and their customers, greening the environment is inseparable from saving some green.

“Just focusing on being green doesn’t improve our market position,” observes Volker Klocke, Ing, senior controls project engineer with GL&V Paper Group in Lenox, Mass. GLV makes paper manufacturing machinery, winders and slitting systems in particular. “It’s instead the combination of functionality, safety and energy efficiency that makes our machines better in ways that matter to our customers,” adds Klocke.

 Diane Trentini, director of marketing and sales operations for system integrator Optimation Technology in Rush, N.Y., agrees. “Good machine design means meeting design requirements while being cost-effective, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable. All these criteria must align to justify a green machine.”

Another machine builder cautions against green hype. “We don’t see anything applicable to our machines as green, and using such a term would be nothing more than a marketing ploy with little if any real meaning,” says Leon Drake, chief engineer at Dynatorch, a manufacturer of CNC plasma cutting machines in Paducah, Ky.

Most everyone we spoke with agreed that green won’t sell machines unless it’s accompanied by real cost or performance improvements. But it turns out that many cost/performance advancements are green-related and have been spurred by the environmental movement.

Cost and performance improvements tinged with green are in big demand and don’t go in and out of fashion. Perhaps the leading way to go green, improve machine performance and cut machine operating costs is to cut energy use.

Green Starts With Energy Savings

Even when it costs more to make an energy-efficient machine, operating savings can offset the expense. Touting a machine’s energy efficiency as a green benefit can provide a competitive advantage.

“Green for us mainly means making more energy-efficient machines to reduce energy consumption by our customers,” explains Klocke of GLV. “Toward that end, we always try to have the low-energy state be the safe and default state for our machines. Another way to save energy is to reduce the time to switch a machine completely off and then on again.”

Partner Pak in Huntington Beach, Calif., manufactures machines to seal clamshell packages using UV adhesive technology. It also designs custom packing machinery with SCARA robots to pick and place products or dispense adhesive. By using a different sealing technology than its competitors, Partner Pack says it achieves a quantum leap in energy savings. “Our UV sealing method allows a packaging line to be fully automated and only uses about 10% of the energy of more traditional sealing methods such as RF or sonic,” claims Helcio Trindade, vice president of engineering at Partner Pak. “We have been able to capitalize on our energy savings as part of sustainability initiatives endorsed by Wal-Mart, Costco and other major retailers. These firms and some of our other larger customers are buying machines from us because our entire packaging process is green.”

Building a green machine doesn’t cost more, says Trindade, and “it gives our sales force one more tool to sell against the competition. If a machine is designed to use less energy, the electric components from motors to wiring to cabinets can be sized smaller and less expensive.”

Cut Waste

Cutting waste is a great way to go green while saving big bucks for OEM customers. “The biggest environmental payoff in packaging comes not from eco-design of the machine, but from reduction in packaging materials,” says Jarrett Campbell, segment marketing manager for packaging machinery at Schneider Electric.