Rapidly Deployable MTConnect-Based Machine Tool Monitoring Systems

Abstract

The amount of data that can be gathered from a machining process is often misunderstood, and even if these data are collected, they are frequently underutilized. Intelligent uses of data collected from a manufacturing operation can lead to increased productivity and lower costs. While some large-scale manufacturers have developed custom solutions for data collection from their machine tools, small- and medium-size enterprises need efficient and easily deployable methods for data collection and analysis. This paper presents three broad solutions to data collection from machine tools, all of which rely on the open-source and royalty-free MTConnect protocol: the first is a machine monitoring dashboard based on Microsoft Excel; the second is an open source solution using Python and MTConnect; and the third is a cloud-based system using Google Sheets. Time studies are performed on these systems to determine their capability to gather near real-time data from a machining process.

Monitoring on a shoestring: Low cost solutions for digital manufacturing

“…However there are still many less demanding applications within SMEs where monitoring that uses low-cost COTS sensors and systems for potentially simpler use cases can be of significant benefit (Lynn et al, 2017;.…”

Review of Intelligence for Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing: Current Status and Future Prospects

“…The operational instruction in HM comes from G-codes, in terms of toolpath trajectories generated from CAD/CAM software [ 185 ]. Moreover, open-platform standards (such as MTConnect) enable machine operational information to be accessible for monitoring [ 186 ], inspection and sensing data streams, as illustrated in Figure 20 a [ 185 ]. However, the geometry data and the thermal history of a component are required for tool path planning for intermediate and final machining processes [ 184 ].…”