Machine Tool Integrations with MTConnect

Mar 19

In the world of manufacturing, two major technologies are at play. The first includes generalized manufacturing equipment: pumps, motors, valves, conveyance systems, some robotics, heat treatment equipment, and other equipment that’s typically in most factories. The second—and much more specialized technology—is the world of machine tools. The machine tools category encompasses CNC machines, lathes, mills, robotics, computer controlled saws, and other subtractive manufacturing tools.

Many manufacturing companies have both types of technology under one roof. For example, one of our customers (who uses all of the above) makes steel pipe fittings and flanges. Their process involves heat treating raw materials to achieve the desired material specifications, then they machine each part. They add bevels on pipe elbows for welding, and CNC machine their pipe flanges to required tolerances.

You will also see a mixture of both manufacturing technologies in the aerospace industry, automotive, and many other industries that make a variety of parts.

Get Visibility into Your Operations with Integrated Systems

For a more generalized approach, PLCs typically operate equipment, SCADA systems monitor and control everything, and ERP systems help you plan and manage production. In the machine tool world, each piece of equipment has a complex CNC controllers to manage exacting product specifications. And while ERP systems manage overall production planning and execution, companies are starting integrate their machine tools with their operational technology (OT) systems to provide real-time data and information about production capabilities to their business teams.

In our experience, we’ve seen many companies use the entire spectrum of manufacturing technology including general operations completely integrated with historical data collection, operator interfaces, and business system integrations—all while their machine tools are still entirely using paper processes!

This may be because they’re using “older” machine tools that are difficult if not impossible to integrate with, or the complexity of getting data from the CNC controllers is not worth the extra effort—especially if they are using machines dedicated to specific parts and all they really need to know is how many parts were produced.

Fortunately, with modern SCADA solutions like Ignition and Peakboard it is now easier than ever to integrate these machine tools into your information systems with MTConnect.

The Benefits of MTConnect and Machine Tool Integration

Getting data from your machine tools with MTConnect will let you track any of the information available from your equipment.

To start, you can retrieve cycle times, production counts, tool life, and speeds and feeds. Tracking this information outside of the machine will show you the overall productivity of your machines, help you optimize your programs to improve cycle times, and alert your crew when tools need to be swapped out for fresh ones.

You can even begin to track issues and perform preventative maintenance on your machines and prevent costly unplanned downtime. Depending on your machines, you may even be able to track data on your spindles and motors to learn if they need to be maintained more often to ensure optimal performance.

Integrating Machine Tools and General Manufacturing Equipment

Once your machine tools are sending data with MTConnect, you’ll open up a world of possibilities for your operations.

For the fittings and flanges process we mentioned earlier in this post, connecting their machine tools and their general process equipment enabled better information sharing with their customers.

Their heat treating process is performed in various batches, with historical data collected in their Ignition SCADA system. Then, they generate production reports from this data. These reports include information on the raw materials that were heat treated, the process setpoints, utility and gas usage, and the overall soak times and temperatures for each batch. These reports are also accessible through their customer facing system, so any customer can pull up a report on the particular heat treatment operations on every part they buy.

By integrating the heat treatment data with their Machine Tools we can tie each machined part to the heat treatment batch it came from and generate machining reports too. Since each part is also engraved with various information including the heat treatment batch number and serial number once a customer has purchased a part they can enter this batch number into the system, pull up the heat treatment report, as well as the Machine Tool report for that part.

Further, as parts from each batch are run through their quality control processes the test results are integrated into the reports for each batch.

This provides transparency to their customers, showing them exactly what processes were performed on each part. It also simplifies any issues related to part failures in the field with proof heat treatment operations were performed, along detailed information on all of the relevant quality tests and machining operations.

Imagine Having a Complete Picture of Your Entire Production Capacity

Integrating general manufacturing processes with SCADA systems is a well tested and relatively easy proposition for most manufacturing companies. But, for companies with machining requirements along with general manufacturing, integrating their machine tools will add an incredible amount of valuable data and information.

Integrating your machine tools with your business system will reduce your reliance on paper processes and manual data entry. It will help you see a complete picture of your entire operational capacity, and will help you identify the inefficiencies that directly impact your bottom line.

Integrated these systems will provide transparency to your customers, and is a great way to add a lot of value to your products without much additional investment in tools, technology or processes. Another powerful benefit of integrating all of your equipment is the ability to tie everything together into a Unified Namespace for a complete picture of your entire business at a glance.

In future posts, we will take a deeper dive into how we integrate machine tools with systems like Ignition and Peakboard to help manufacturing companies get the most value from their equipment.