Meet the Man behind the curtain
We collected the suggestions of our customers, Field Service Engineers and Customer Application Engineers and then presented the concept to our Lead Programmer, Arnold. He is our "Man behind the curtain" at Royal Master Grinders. His response, after a slight pause and look around the room, was "Yeah, we can make that work!"
Thus, Arnold's World was born. In the Arnold's World section of our Booth, you will see all of the Royal Master Grinder machines that are under power connected by a network cable to Arnold’s computer. From his Supervisor Position, he will have remote access to these machines via network cable or the internet on his PC or Smart Phone.
The nuts and bolts
The machines can have outgoing communications to the world using simple tools like Microsoft ACCESS Web Database or other similar software. In this case the machine writes to a formatted report which is sent by e-mail to a supervisor. The report is created to include the run status of the machine, number of parts ground, gauging reports of size, taper, surface finish, lobing or whatever the output of the gauge and machine can provide. These reports can be manually or automatically sent.
The incoming communication to the machine allows the supervisor to have complete access of the machine control including spindle and coolant power on/off, size compensation, initiate an automatic wheel dress, start or stop an automatic feeder, troubleshoot the cause of downtime, etc. It is possible to upload software to the grinder to enable a change in the program remotely.
When a webcam is positioned correctly and connected to the machine controller, our Service Engineers have been able to diagnose and correct a process problem including feeding or grinding or unloading phases of a grind process.
Remember, this is all done via internet or network cable to a remote device including your Smart Phone. To prove its capability, and with advance permission, Arnold logged into customer machines in Japan, The Philippines, Ireland and the USA. He was able to upload a program from his desktop computer at Royal Master Grinders, download the program directly to the customer’s machine and run cycles on the grinder to test the results; all of this from his I-Phone on the beach in the Caribbean. Now that is cool!
Our Grinders live in a 3-D world too
As if that wasn't enough, Arnold tells us we live in a 3-D World and so should our grinders. He is announcing the Royal Master 3-D Graphic Package available with our Gen X machines and CNC Wheel Dress machines. He empowers the machine with the ability to receive a part print file from Solid Modeling software, automatically translate this design to the part grind or wheel dress form by creating an EXCEL spreadsheet to generate the program used by the grinder. The "Tool Path" is created and the operator never sees a G or M code. The Operator Interface Screen will display a 3-D graphic representation or virtual part which you can move.
Stop in and meet our "man behind the curtain." Arnold's World is for real! We have connections to each of the grinders under power on our booth floor. Arnold will be demonstrating this 3-D Graphic Package on some of the grinders running parts on the floor of our booth. He will also have an Engineering Station with a demonstration of taking the 3-D Solid Model file, converting to an EXCEL spreadsheet and then using an x-y plotter to print rather than grind the result.
For more information on this product and for an evaluation of how it might benefit your grind application, contact Royal Master Grinders at www.royalmaster.com.
