Fritz Studer
Assembly Line
Investing in New Technology at AccuRounds
Setting Up the Building Blocks for a Digital Factory
Woodward Inc. spent over a year developing an API to connect machines to its digital factory. Caron Engineering’s MiConnect has cut most of this process while also granting the shop greater access to machine information.
MiConnect plays two major roles at Woodward. First, it connects data from the machines to Ignition, the company’s SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) software from Inductive Automation, and vice versa, enabling the digital factory concept. Second, the software streamlines the development of successful automation integrations, both directly through simplification of robot cell control and indirectly through revision control and facilitation of machine tool compensation features.
Jason Reeves, manufacturing engineering manager at Woodward’s Rock Cut campus in Rockford, Illinois, says that the company has used Caron’s TMAC (Tool Monitoring Adaptive Control) and auto-compensation software programs since they launched a decade ago. The software programs, at their core, would eventually power MiConnect, he says, and he can chart the course of the software’s development through his interactions with Caron staff.
Woodward’s Rock Cut team primarily uses Makino, Okuma, and Studer tools for its high-tolerance, mid-volume workload, but also uses a Tsugami Swiss-type and other assorted machines for particular jobs. The team tried to interface these machines with Ignition, starting with the Makino machines, but transferring the exact data they wanted proved difficult. Coding custom connectivity to acquire the data from the Makino machines’ FANUC controls — and later, setting up two-way communication — took over a year of work. Crucial pieces of data were invisible from the user end, and the team would have to code without knowing if they were targeting the correct pieces of information. While the project was ultimately successful, it was impractical to repeat for the other types of machines — at least, not without software that could cut this engineering time. This is where Reeves says MiConnect proved itself.