Chemnitz is among the Top Locations for Machine Tool Research

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the “Thermo-energetic Design of Machine Tools” Collaborative Research Centre to the tune of roughly 10 million euros

Chemnitz University of Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU are among the guiding lights of machine tool research in Germany. This was reinforced by the German Research Foundation’s decision on 23 May 2019 to continue funding the “Thermo-energetic Design of Machine Tools” Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio (SFB/TRR) 96. The SFB/TRR will now be funded for its third round, and the DFG will invest about 10 million euros in research funding at its participating locations of Chemnitz, Aachen and Dresden over the next four years.

In their report, the excellent performance and unique achievements of the applicants from Chemnitz University of Technology, RWTH Aachen University, TU Dresden and Fraunhofer IWU were confirmed by the experts, as well as the current relevance of continuing machine tool research at its three sites.

“I give my heartiest congratulations to everyone involved and am extremely pleased about this great success. The funding from the DFG is a clearly visible sign of the very high relevance of machine tool research at our university in relation to Chemnitz as an overall centre of science and research,” says Prof. Dr. Gerd Strohmeier, President of Chemnitz University of Technology.

“This is also a great signal for the scientific landscape of Chemnitz, with its long tradition in machine tool construction,” says Prof. Dr. Matthias Putz, Chair of the Professorship of Machine Tool Design and Forming Technology at Chemnitz University of Technology and Director of Fraunhofer IWU. “The approval of our joint renewal proposal represents an appreciation of our scientific work and underlines the trust given by the experts in the Saxon research landscape.”

Background: Machine tool research in Chemnitz

Since 2011, participating scientists have been investigating the thermal accuracy of machine tools. In addition to the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Processes (IWP) at Chemnitz University of Technology, three professorships from the Faculty of Mathematics are also involved in, among other things, meaningfully reducing the highly complex simulation models for a faster calculation, or calculating the optimal placement of temperature sensors on the machine.

“The individual sub-projects at Chemnitz University of Technology and the Fraunhofer IWU work very closely together,” emphasises Dr. Janine Glänzel, Subproject Leader of the SFB/TRR. A clear sign of this successful interdisciplinary cooperation is the shared climate cell, in which entire machines are thermo-energetically analysed under different climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity or the presence of wind. “The climatic influences on the precision of the machine and the quality of the components can be enormous – our task is to eliminate the so-called ‘weather sensitivity’ of the systems,” explains Glänzel.

In the third phase of the research, the focus is on the transfer of the individual models and correction algorithms of machine components into the overall machine, during real-time operation. This will make possible the transfer of correction and compensation solutions to the industry as a whole. Currently, three projects in the machine tool industry and in component development are being worked on at the three research locations, with more projects to follow.

For more information, please contact Prof. Dr. Matthias Putz, Chair of the Professorship of Machine Tool Design and Forming Technology at Chemnitz University of Technology and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute IWU. Telephone 0371 539 71445, E-mail matthias.putz@mb.tu-chemnitz.de.

(Authors: Katja Klöden, Martin Lamß, Matthias Fejes / Translation: Jeffrey Karnitz)

Matthias Fejes
24.05.2019

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