A non-profit organization touted an economical way to unlock capabilities from CNC machine tool monitoring to closed-loop process control. #Data Problem
At the Eastec trade show last fall, I stopped to watch an interesting display: a milling machine and a 3D printer, with a collaborative robot between them, all of which consisted of a display that highlighted various dashboards and charts. Large monitors provide support. All of these devices are connected by the real star of this demonstration: a small box on the table, filled with circuits and wires, and with red, green and yellow stacked lights.
When I talked to Larry Megan, CTO of Advanced Manufacturing International (AMI), the device has been facilitating continuous data flow between robots, machine tools, printers, and a set of Bluetooth-enabled calipers—data is not only used to monitor the process , Also used to control the process. Like small manufacturers with limited resources, the product is worthy of the name: Low Investment Manufacturing Solutions (LIMS).
As Eastec demonstrated, LIMS uses standard protocols to connect to various devices, from processing and inspection equipment to robots and 3D printers.
Maintaining equipment economy is largely because AMI is a non-profit organization. Partners and contributors basically take action through AMI to pursue a common goal: to ensure that digital transformation penetrates the supply chain, not only the largest original equipment manufacturers and "smart factories."
For this reason, LIMS (and more broadly AMI) is specifically aimed at small and medium manufacturers. Although these companies usually lack the financial resources and information technology expertise of large companies, Megan said that these companies are equally innovative and even more flexible in implementing data-driven manufacturing. The hope for edge devices is that these companies will start learning "how to fish," he continued, citing proverbs about the value of learning tasks rather than the value of completing tasks for you. In this analogy, LIMS is just a fishing tackle: manufacturers start by learning to "fish"—or more specifically, the hooks, ropes, and other tools needed to monitor and improve their processes in real time.
This is not to suggest that the user is alone. Megan said he also specializes in manufacturing process and system evaluation and consulting. However, LIMS aims to give users ownership of the platform and promote the expansion of its functions. For this reason, it is easy to install and use out of the box.
LIMS is designed for ease of use and is equipped with common components.
Opening the box, only some basic necessities were found: a 110V power supply, an industrial computer, and an input/output hub for connecting from the Ethernet to the RS232 cable to the PLC hard-wiring (the 3D printer in the demo is connected via USB, and One of the displays on the display maps its XYZ position). Other connections may include temperature, pressure or current sensors anywhere in the workshop. The system can be expanded by simply adding more boxes and connecting more sensors/machines.
As for the software that processes data, the solution engine is based on open standards, which makes it vendor-agnostic. According to Megan, the system "talks" more than 50 industrial protocols (well-known examples include MTConnect and OPC-UA as well as PC-DMIS and QIF). Standard features include dashboard display of the utilization of all connected machines, from basic uptime/downtime display to calculation of overall equipment efficiency. Per Megan's "phishing" analogy, it also provides users with a statistical engine to configure and analyze, and a rule engine to provide a custom interface drag and drop function. From Excel spreadsheets to on-site databases to machine learning algorithms in the cloud, information can be exported to almost any location the user needs. Or, the device itself can store data, depending on the application and the amount of information.
As the initial barriers to collecting and analyzing data are broken, manufacturers can focus on turning analysis into action. Multi-color stack lights are a basic example, but meeting certain data thresholds may also trigger email, SMS, or other alerts. In fact, users with the right applications may quickly move to closed-loop process control without any additional investment or IT expertise.
The trade show demonstration provides an example of what this process control might look like. The 3D printer generates a doughnut-shaped blank, the Bluetooth caliper measures the diameter, and then the collaborative robot transfers it to the machine for fine drilling. In LIMS, the software uses the inspection data to adjust the machine G code to ensure that the appropriate size drill bit is selected from the tool changer. "We are using real-time data," Megan said. "LIMS not only receives information, but also provides output by transmitting new commands to the drill press."
In addition to LIMS, Megan said that AMI's broader work has just begun. The organization was established last fall as a new sister company of the National Defense Manufacturing and Processing Center (NCDMM), which has been committed to bringing new technologies and processes to the defense industrial base since 2003. Leaders in industry, government, and academia have all seen the promise of digital transformation and the urgency for all manufacturers to share this promise.
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