EPUMENT Mineral Casting – Minimal CO2 Emissions, Maximum Vibration Damping
With its innovative EPUMENT® mineral casting and EPUDUR ultra-high performance concrete machine bed materials, RAMPF Machine Systems has for decades played a key role in ensuring low-carbon production in high-tech mechanical engineering. In a keynote speech at the “Green Shift – Cutting Emissions” digital event tomorrow, March 10, Sales Manager Kacper Lasetzki will be showing how the mineral casting pioneer is successfully combining sustainability and strictest technical requirements.
EPUMENT® mineral casting and EPUDUR ultra-high performance concrete from RAMPF Machine Systems are used around the world to manufacture machine beds and machine bed components – both in applications in conventional machine tool construction and in the semi-conductor, laser, medical, and packaging industries.
The key advantages of these innovative materials over gray cast iron and welded constructions are, firstly, the considerably enhanced damping, which ensures the machine bed has greater dynamic stability in ultrafast and high-precision production machinery.
Secondly, mineral casting and ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) stand out thanks to their resource-efficient manufacture and environmentally friendly disposal and recycling:
- EPUMENT® and EPUDUR are cold cast in molds made from wood, steel, or plastic. As the manufacturing process does not require any heat, it consumes up to 30 percent less primary energy than the smelting of gray cast iron and steel.
- The high casting precision, combined with highly accurate RAMPF in-house replication technology, eliminates the need for transportation to external processors and reduces/avoids the use of processing machinery. CO2 emissions are approximately 50 percent lower when precision surfaces are applied rather than milled.
- EPUMENT® and EPUDUR are made of over 90 percent naturally occurring minerals and stones, plus a binding agent based on epoxy resin in the case of EPUMENT® and cement in the case of EPUDUR.
- The recycling of disused machines is possible without any problems, as the materials of the machine beds and machine bed components can be disposed of in the same way as normal construction materials. Trials have been run on the use of large-scale shredder plants to break down mineral casting and UHPC to chippings and on separating out integrated metal components. Chippings from mineral casting are used as recycled material in road building, industrial construction, landfill surface sealing, and creating green spaces. Mineral castings are virtually 100 percent recyclable.
Technical and cost benefits
Kacper Lasetzki, Sales Manager at RAMPF Machine Systems:
Mineral casting and UHPC are the number one choice, both in terms of protecting the climate and thanks to their technical and cost benefits. These benefits are set to become increasingly important in the years ahead, as the German government has currently fixed the CO2 price at 25 euros per ton and will increase it to 55 euros in 2025. A price range of at least 55 and at most 65 euros is planned for 2026.
RAMPF Machine Systems is a long-established manufacturer of machine beds made from mineral casting and UHPC on the international markets, counting the world’s largest mechanical engineering companies among its customers, and achieving an annual production volume of 5,000 machine beds and a casting volume of 15,000 metric tons per year. The full service provided by the company ranges from material-specific design and engineering, production, and assembly to replication, grinding, and lapping processes at its in-house grinding center.
