Low-cost sensors and analytics for a digital factory

ORNL Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and Perisense worked on a low-cost solution for machining process monitoring to enable a digital factory. Enabling machine connectivity for digital factors is expensive for many small to medium manufacturers. The hypothesis for the research project is that a lowcost sensor suite, which can be retrofitted to a legacy machine tool or a new machine tool, can effectively provide real-time, in-situ sensing for manufacturing processes, which can enable improvements in process performance and efficiency. The Perisense sensor node was installed on the Haas TM1 machine with a current sensor and an accelerometer. Cutting tests were performed at different process parameters and sensor data was recorded. Results show a correlation of the current sensor to the spindle load. The accelerometer, mounted on the machine base, showed a correlation to the spindle speed as well as the spindle load. The sensor data can be used to monitor the machining process and provide insights on the machine spindle load utilization.