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OPC 40501 UA for Machine Tools

The OPC 40501 series addresses use cases and para­meters specifically for machine tools.

The aim is to cre­ate a com­mon inter­face among machine tools of dif­fer­ent tech­no­lo­gies, man­u­fac­tur­ers and mod­el series.

The first part of the OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion for Machine Tools aims to provide the basics for such an inter­face. These allow for mon­it­or­ing the machine tool and provid­ing an over­view of the jobs on it. Most of this inform­a­tion is not spe­cif­ic to a par­tic­u­lar tech­no­logy. The OPC UA for Machine Tools inter­face facil­it­ates the exchange of inform­a­tion between a machine tool and soft­ware sys­tems like MES, SCADA, ERP or data ana­lyt­ics systems.

The Machine Tool Spe­cific­a­tion was recently updated with Use Cases provided by OPC UA for Machinery, espe­cially the Machine States Use Cases. They serve as the basis for fur­ther KPI Mon­it­or­ing facets to enable cal­cu­la­tions based on ISO 22400 KPI definitions.

umati provides resources on how to imple­ment UA4MT uni­formly at umati.org/dev

Part 1 cov­ers these use cases:

  • Identi­fy machines of dif­fer­ent manufacturers
  • Over­view of wheth­er pro­duc­tion is running
  • Over­view of parts in a job
  • Over­view of runtimes for a job
  • Over­view of machine tool state
  • Over­view of upcom­ing manu­al activities
  • Over­view of errors and warnings
  • Provid­ing inform­a­tion for KPI calculations
  • Provid­ing an over­view of tool data
  • Provid­ing OPC UA for Machinery Use Cases

OPC 40501–1 and VDMA 40501–1 was ini­ti­ated by VDW, the Ger­man Machine Tool Build­ers‘ Asso­ci­ation. It was cre­ated by a Joint Work­ing Group between VDW and the OPC Found­a­tion, com­pris­ing over 90 com­pan­ies and almost 200 par­ti­cipants from all around the world.