The aim of this spe­cific­a­tion series is to cov­er all met­al form­ing machines and define all rel­ev­ant pro­cess val­ues for met­al forming.

Part 1 of this spe­cific­a­tion con­tains vari­ous build­ing blocks for met­al form­ing that enable use cases to be for­mu­lated for dif­fer­ent types of  met­al form­ing machines by tak­ing build­ing blocks from related com­pan­ion specifications.

The spe­cific­a­tions address the three main cat­egor­ies of met­al form­ing: bulk form­ing, sheet form­ing, and powder form­ing and their under­ly­ing processes.

OPC 40503–1 devel­op­ment was ini­ti­ated by Schuler Group, hos­ted and sponsored by the VDW, the Ger­man Machine Tool Build­ers’ Asso­ci­ation. It was cre­ated by a Joint Work­ing Group between the VDW and the OPC Found­a­tion, com­pris­ing the lead­ing experts from com­pan­ies and asso­ci­ations like:

• Aida
• Amada
• AP&T Group
• Fanuc
• Japan Form­ing Machinery Association
• Komatsu
• Mit­subishi Electric
• Mur­atec
• Oster­walder
• Schuler Group
• SMS Group
• Trumpf

The Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion cov­ers the fol­low­ing use cases:

• Provid­ing OPC UA for Machine Tools Use Cases
  — using the Machine Tools Facets
• Provid­ing access to repet­it­ive form­ing data and cyc­lic monitoring
• Provid­ing access to char­ac­ter­ist­ic form­ing positions
  and cyc­lic monitoring
• Provid­ing inform­a­tion for met­al form­ing tool-spe­cif­ic parameters
• Provid­ing Pro­cess Val­ues from func­tion­al work­ing units related to the form­ing process
• Cyc­lic Mon­it­or­ing of spe­cif­ic job parameters
• Cyc­lic Mon­it­or­ing for form­ing part-spe­cif­ic information
• Noti­fic­a­tion if spe­cif­ic met­al form­ing con­di­tions appear dur­ing processing