The CNC machines or those with PLC, will, with the integration and connection, report what they are doing in real-time, how efficient they are, if they are being used well or badly, what degree of quality they can produce, anticipated diagnoses of problems for predictive and preventive maintenance through warning alarms, an anomaly in the process, in short, if it stopped, why stopped? If your optimal status is running very close to the scheduled available time.
You will guarantee quality at the source, respecting the limits of capability, with the measurement through a probe or through laser scanning, whichever is faster will be incorporated into the process. You will be able to monitor and sense the surface finish determined in the design of the part being machined, with measurement of the roughness in process with the probe occupying a position in the turret or the machine’s magazine.
With this, you will be able to generate quality graphics; CEP, for example, is important in the traceability of processed products, ensuring the precision and repeatability of a high-reliability standard product, necessary in the parts of the aviation industry, among others. As soon as a production order is finished, the process chart is already available on the server for those interested in traceability. Traceability is no longer the center of the objective, as the guarantee that the process is quality assured is more critical than information because the system guarantees quality from the knowledge acquired and stored in a database.
From an administrative point of view, CNC machines must receive production orders and their respective sequencing, leaving no doubt about what to do, what time to do, and what resources are available. This doubt often makes the machine standstill waiting for the definition of the production manager.
Based on planning, using databases of fasteners and tools, in addition to the feature of classifying and coding parts for the formation of part families, all information can and must be sent or made available to the prefabrication sector. Set prepare in advance the tooling that must be used according to the production planning and scheduling.
CNC machines are increasingly prioritizing towers or tool magazines in their project, with many tools, which allow executing all the production orders of the day without changing worn tools. Another, such as a lathe, has a magazine with nuts. For automatic and fast changes to prioritize the reduction of setup time or even to almost zero setups.
On the other hand, CNC machining centers like CNC double column machining center for instance have quick pallet change systems or are equipped with auxiliary tables and a “zero point” system with high positioning accuracy. Another feature that CNC machines will increasingly have as usual will be robots for changing tools from an auxiliary magazine placed next to the machine, in addition, of course, to monitoring the wear of the tools in the probe’s actuation schedule over time. The advantage of processing is that this time is absolute and will be part of the processing time and will be absolute and repetitive, very important in managing the control of resource occupation time, with finite capacity.