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Published in Richard Zurawski, Industrial Communication Technology Handbook, 2017
MTConnect is an open and royalty-free standard for manufacturing that is used for connecting manufacturing equipment with applications by using proven Internet protocols. Think of MTConnect as the Bluetooth for manufacturing. With Bluetooth, both devices must speak Bluetooth for anything useful to happen. Just as simply having an OBD-II port on your car does not provide you with any more data unless you have an OBD-II scanner, the same pairing principle applies to MTConnect and software applications. You can have an MTConnect-enabled machine tool or piece of manufacturing equipment, but without the software to read and analyze the data, you do not have both sides of the equation. The OBD-II scanner is really the application or the tool that you use to help you understand what is happening with your engine. In manufacturing, it is software applications, such as shop floor monitoring programs that are the applications, that speak to an MTConnect-enabled piece of manufacturing equipment on the shop floor.
Big Data Analysis for Smart Manufacturing
Published in Yulei Wu, Fei Hu, Geyong Min, Albert Y. Zomaya, Big Data and Computational Intelligence in Networking, 2017
Standardization of the collected data is essential for further data mining since the sensors and controllers from different companies may use different data structures. MTConnect is proved to be an effective standard to transform data from different data sources into a uniform format. MTConnect is an open, royalty-free standard that presents data from shop-floor devices in XML format. This standard is gaining increasing support from machine tool manufacturers. Furthermore, the interoperability of MTConnect enables third party solution providers to develop software and hardware to improve manufacturing processes [6]. Figure 20.2 shows the integration of a data collection system using MTConnect.
Manufacturing and automation as a recovery path toward sustainable growth
Published in Harish Hirani, Technological Innovations for Effective Pandemic Response, 2023
For developing a smart product design in the smart manufacturing environment, the CPS provides the solution to enable smart machine tool systems to produce physical products which connect all the physical and virtual systems by creating a network system for communication and interaction of the intelligent devices with each other. This also provides the solution for smart production and scheduling systems toward manufacturing/industrial applications where the smart devices are digitally connected by the end-to-end feature of the ICT system [32]. The radio frequency identification device (RFID) tags, Zigbee and Wi-Fi modules are attached to key element components (like bearings, spindles and cutting tools, etc.) for connecting physical objects using unique identification address protocols. During the operation of the machine tool system, a variety of sensors and actuators such as dynamometers, temperature sensors, vibrations sensors, cameras and its support acquisition devices are integrated with the systems to monitor real-time machine performance. The machining process data are collected by attached key elements. The different data communication technologies such as RS-232, Ethernet, Bluetooth, 3G/4G network, etc. are exploited for transmitting the real-time data. For gathering all the data, all key components are to be defined so that their physical characteristics and real-time status can be simultaneously identified. The communication protocols are standardized so that communications are carried out properly where MTConnect standards are used for identification of manufacturing equipment because these communication standards are easily available. Therefore, a plug-and-play environment can be used in the manufacturing environment which reduces the cost of data integration [34]. MTConnect can interpret collected data from different devices into a common format (like XML, etc.) which is used by most software applications. An ISO-10303 file is also created which is known as a STEP format. Using said standard protocols, the communication service (through the internet service provider) sends the communication to the key components and collects real-time data for a particular application.
Universal manufacturing: enablers, properties, and models
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2022
Some of the manufacturing equipment and devices, software, and systems available on the market support the MTConnect standard. An MTConnect implementation requires an adapter (translating the native device data into MTConnect) for each device and one or more software agents (performing data aggregation, formatting, and temporary storage). Adapters are supplied by device manufacturers, control manufacturers, or third parties. They are usually proprietary, offered for a fee software. Some adapters run on their own hardware, such as an industrial PC, managed switch, or a gateway device. The current and archival versions of MTConnect available at no cost to the public at www.mtconnect.org/documents. The open-source developer tools can be downloaded from www.github.com/mtconnect.
Digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools in the era of Industry 4.0: a review
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2023
MTConnect (“MTConnect” 2021), first released by the MTConnect Institute in 2008, is an open, royalty-free, and standardised communication protocol that allows data exchange between manufacturing equipment and software applications. It offers a semantic vocabulary for manufacturing equipment to provide structured, contextualised data with no proprietary format. MTConnect is developed specifically for CNC machine tools, and hence attracted significant attention from the machine tool manufacturers. Currently, more than 20 machine tool brands (Fanuc, Siemens, Mazak, DMG Mori, Okuma, Haas, etc.) offer MTConnect support from the factory or via third-party developers.
Shop floor to cloud connect for live monitoring the production data of CNC machines
Published in International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 2020
Prathima B A, Sudha P N, Suresh P M
Most of the machines are equipped with RS 232 serial port for data communication. Data can be sent out through the CNC machine’s RS232 serial port whenever there is a cycle start/end, spindle on/off, etc. Machine’s RS232 serial port is connected to a server via serial-to-LAN converters, over wired or Wi-Fi network. Data is sent to the server, reports are visible on PCs on the local network. However, it calls for IT infrastructure like LAN and cables. Many old generation machines may not have Macros enabled in the CNC System. Next-generation machines have Ethernet connectivity along with RS232. Ethernet port is connected to a server via serial-LAN converters, over wired or Wi-Fi network on shop floor. Data is sent to the server, reports are visible on PCs on the local network. MTConnect is a data exchange protocol that allows various devices of manufacturing systems to share data seamlessly in a common format enabling very good interoperability (Vijayaraghavan et al. 2008). Sunny, Liu, and Shahriar (2017), has developed an agent-adapter-based communication method for exchanging manufacturing services over the internet in the cyber physical manufacturing cloud based on MTConnect and HTTP. In Siemens controller machines, data acquisition is realized based on OPC specification (Wang et al. 2016). But this is specific to Siemens controller machines. Recent studies show that the status of signals at the machine’s relays is monitored through a sensor that tracks digital signal lines from the CNC machine’s PLC. These data can be sent directly to cloud using TCP/IP protocols using Mobile network. José Álvares, Oliveira, and Ferreira (2018) have developed a framework in the form of an internet-based client-server model, for monitoring and teleoperation of CNC machine tools, which has attributes compliant with Industry 4.0.