INDUSTRY 4.0 & AUTOMATION INTERFACE DEVELOPMENTS & MORE
users to connect any machine themselves:
no visit, no extra hardware. The company has
produced its own PC software and associated
discovery agent that is downloaded and then
let loose across a company’s network,
discovering and connecting machines and
allowing for the transmission of data. In its
more sophisticated guise, El nOS can be
cloud-based or an on-premise Edge solution.
It employs standard machine/network
interfaces OPC UA, MTConnect, OMA, ROS
and MQTT, connecting to Siemens (https://
is.gd/qukaco), FANUC (https://is.gd/ematin),
Mitsubishi (https://is.gd/yahuqu) and
Heidenhain (https://is.gd/ivugiv) CNCs, plus
Comau (https://is.gd/adapad) and FANUC
robots. The company is working with machine
tool builders Doosan of South Korea and Flow
of the US, plus South Korean robot maker
Hanwha and Japanese bearings expert THK.
Part of the company’s offering is a cloudbased
platform that makes available to users
apps, data analysis and sensors, the latter to
support retro tting of data collection
capabilities in the areas of vibration, noise,
pressure and temperature. These sensors
are connected to an El nOS box having Wi-Fi
capability that sends data to an El nOS dataprocessing
Edge device that can also connect
to the cloud.
Unomic has installations such as those at
Hanwha Aerospace, where 100 machines are
connected, in South Korea and Vietnam; at a
South Korean auto parts maker where 150
machines are connected; as well as at a
South Korean THK facility that has 100
machine tools connected. Bene ts are
reduced lead times, defects and customer
complaints, says Unomic.
In pitching itself against competitors, the
company puts itself at the top, in terms of
openness, sustainability and cost to
implement – the cost to implement is zero
with the PC-based software system, after all.
A somewhat newer entrant in the machine
tool connectivity area is Germany’s MCU
GmbH (www.mcu-gmbh.de). It is actually
associated with machine tool company
Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH
(www.sw-machines.de), a maker of multispindle
high volume machine tools (previously
Hechler & Koch up until 1995). Already
offering its Toolinspect II (Toolinspect original
was launched in the mid-2000s), this latest
version of the hardware/software machine
Digital twins. Can you hear me?
Walking past CNC or PC screens displaying digital twins of machine tools and cutting
processes is no longer surprising. But to walk past such a display at EMO and hear
metal being cut when there isn’t a machine tool actually connected to the digital twin
is unusual. That’s what those passing by ModuleWorks’ stand (www.moduleworks.com)
experienced. It has actually been a capability for some time, developed to aid the
training of individuals and allow them to get an understanding of what good and bad
cutting sounds like. Perhaps less useful on an actual machine then, because the
noise comes for free.
Digital twins are increasingly common, though. DMG Mori says that their use can
reduce machine commissioning time by 80% and is providing digital twins of its
automation products, too, thus giving a complete installation twin. Mazak’s Mazatrol
TWINS are a digital twinning software series that creates a synchronised digital replica
of a Mazak machine within the of ce programming environment. Siemens with its
Sinumerik One control is highlighting bene ts of physical digital twins for machine tool
builders, allowing them innovate faster. Makino (NCMT, https://is.gd/pucuxe)
demonstrated a complete digital twin of a factory at EMO, although this seemed more
about information ow than physical representation, relating to job scheduling,
planning and tracking.
tool add-on can prevent tool breakage and
can be added to a machine without need for
any PLC modi cations. Toolinspect II can be
integrated into Windows and Linux operating
systems, presenting the same user interface
and an identical one to machine and control
system. Other performance and capability
improvements have been made, too.
But the new introduction this show is
MCU’s Liveinspect hardware/software
machine tool add-on. OPC UA or Modbus TCP
connected, this reads data from machines
(any CNC or PLC variable, Machinery was told)
and processes them further locally, allowing
for the selection of data sources so as to
prevent the generation of irrelevant data. This
data can then be passed to any cloud service
using MQTT – MCU is not in the business of
developing this side of things, rather it
focuses on machine connectivity. Siemens
840Dsl and the FANUC controllers are
supported, with Bosch Rexroth a future step.
So, while umati will make machine
connection and communication a plug-andplay
affair as standard on new machines,
there will remain a market for the connection
of existing machines and these two examples
highlight that there are innovative solutions
for that.
All this connectivity will allow users to
Finnish fi rm Zyfra has artifi cial
intelligence as part of its machine
connectivity, data-gathering and
analysis offering
www.machinery.co.uk @MachineryTweets November 2019 23
/ematin)
/yahuqu)
/ivugiv)
/adapad)
/(www.mcu-gmbh.de)
/(www.sw-machines.de)
/(www.moduleworks.com)
/pucuxe)
/www.machinery.co.uk