Software developer System Insights was tapped by a large power generation equipment company to install its VIMANA software platform in the company's facility for real time and historical analysis of manufacturing productivity. The solution included monitoring Liechti TurboMill milling machines with Rexroth's IndraMotion MTX computerized numeric control (CNC) controller. All of the machine tools in the facility were connected to VIMANA using the MTConnect standard.

Controller connected to analytical software through MTConnect adapter

The VIMANA Connect MTConnect Adapter was developed to read the CNC and programmable logic controller (PLC) information and provide data in the format of the open MTConnect standard to communicate with the IndraMotion MTX controller. With VIMANA, a centralized platform for analysis across all its manufacturing equipment, the production and maintenance engineers at the facility would have the ability to consistently track productivity, as well as gain deep insights into the reasons for production disruptions, maintenance events, and quality spills. 

Empowering power plants

The manufacturing company makes steam turbines for power plants that generate electricity. Among the most essential parts of the turbine are the turbine blades/foils. The company mills these turbine blades with the Liechti TurboMill machine. The operation includes more than 70 of these machines, along with many others, connected to the VIMANA dashboard so engineers can view real-time data on the performance of each machine (see Figure 1).

 

Harmonizing the data

For the integration of System Insights VIMANA with the IndraMotion MTX controller, the key factor was open connectivity, specifically OPC DA. Because OPC is an interface that doesn't require dynamic link library (DLL) implementations, Rexroth didn't have to give System Insights a specific code or have it integrate a code. OPC is a nice open interface. In the end, integration with a partner like System Insights with OPC as a platform was fairly easy. Using MTConnect provided the added benefit of standardizing what the data naming is, what the data format is, and what the data means. Basically, the assigning of information bits, and integers, and real values from controllers into MTConnect allows that translation. OPC and MTConnect interoperability was used to harmonize the data, so the data coming from each machine would be the same. Otherwise, if the data is all different, and has different formatting and attributes, it's very difficult for a software analysis tool to make sense of it (see Figure 2).