At the MC2 MTConnect Conference last week in Cincinnati, they had a type of conference session known as Birds Of a Feather (or BOF) where anyone with a hot topic can reserve a room and see if others come to talk about the subject. Late in the game I signed up to lead a BOF on the topic of "Legacy CNC Connectivity Strategies". At 8:30 pm over 30 people showed up to talk about this subject that I moderated.
I started by giving an overview of the topic and highlighted the importance of this discussion to the advancement of the MTConnect cause. Here are the notes:
MTConnect Adoption Constraint - Legacy CNC Connectivity
1. People need to know that MTConnect exists - a job for the Institute. members and media;
2. Since almost all factory equipment is not natively compliant, we need legacy connectivity support now;
3. Once the data is available, we need applications to deliver the business value.
In the MTConnect Connectivity White Paper, three strategies were highlighted:
1. MTConnect Native Machines or Devices (where data can be derived from the device right away as a standard or optional feature with no other devices - e.g. Mazak and OKUMA so far on their latest controls);
2. MTConnect Translation Devices (where a separate device can be added to a machine tool to take a rich inherent protocol and convert it into Ethernet-based MTConnect XML data - e.g. DNC2, FOCAS, etc);
3. MTConnect Connection (or Bridge) Devices (where data needed for MTConnect is gathered in hard or soft I/O, eavesdropping, DNC dripfeeding, Fanuc MacroB DPRINT commands, etc).
Finally, in an open forum the following good ideas were made:
I started by giving an overview of the topic and highlighted the importance of this discussion to the advancement of the MTConnect cause. Here are the notes:
MTConnect Adoption Constraint - Legacy CNC Connectivity
1. People need to know that MTConnect exists - a job for the Institute. members and media;
2. Since almost all factory equipment is not natively compliant, we need legacy connectivity support now;
3. Once the data is available, we need applications to deliver the business value.
In the MTConnect Connectivity White Paper, three strategies were highlighted:
1. MTConnect Native Machines or Devices (where data can be derived from the device right away as a standard or optional feature with no other devices - e.g. Mazak and OKUMA so far on their latest controls);
2. MTConnect Translation Devices (where a separate device can be added to a machine tool to take a rich inherent protocol and convert it into Ethernet-based MTConnect XML data - e.g. DNC2, FOCAS, etc);
3. MTConnect Connection (or Bridge) Devices (where data needed for MTConnect is gathered in hard or soft I/O, eavesdropping, DNC dripfeeding, Fanuc MacroB DPRINT commands, etc).
Finally, in an open forum the following good ideas were made:
- Mazak has had a rich remote protocol option available on their Mitsubishi CNCs since 1996, but no one knew it and it needs to be translated to MTConnect;
- people "don't know what they don't know" about their machines;
- MTConnect should make available a resource guide for end users as connectivity solutions come on-line;
- An MTConnect sponsored forum could help an open source way to share connectivity information - it could act as a repository for connectivity knowledge base;
- Finally, it was mentioned that MTConnect needs to set up an "implementers group" to address these items, separate from the technical or evangelical group.
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