TOOL & PROCESS MONITORING SYSTEM

Marposs has introduced a new product line to help owners of metalworking equipment to optimize performance, improve quality and reduce operational and maintenance costs of machining processes. The company's new Tool and Process Monitoring System provides continuous monitoring of metalworking processes through several types of sensors—static and dynamic force, vibration, power, temperature, and others. The system's sensors and interfaces enable constant control of various machine functions thus allowing cycle optimization and the reduction of scrap and machine downtime.

The new Marposs system consists of five products for different monitoring purposes and applications:

• Vibration Monitor - for the analysis and monitoring of vibrations in rotating devices such as machine tool spindles to permit the highest possible tool revolutions with reduced maintenance costs while safeguarding the tool, the machine and the quality of production.
• Force Monitor - for the direct and reliable identification and control of the strain and forces acting on the tool to enable optimizing the cutting parameters and production cycles.
• Power Monitor - for controlling the variations in the cutting process through continuous and absolute surveillance of power absorbed by the machine's axis or spindles.
• Displacement Monitor - a simple, compact and economical system for measuring distances and high resolution displacement using special, wear-free non-contact sensors for applications such as automatic compensation for thermal drift.
• Temperature Monitor - a compact and easily installed sensor for monitoring temperature in critical machine tool sub-systems, such as near moving components like axis, gears and spindles.

According to Marposs executives, the need to monitor production processes arises when there is a requirement for increasingly reliable, automated machinery and production cycles in order to satisfy the continual demands of the market to lower costs. Within this framework, it therefore becomes necessary for the machinery to be supervised by systems that carry out process analysis of the machine tool. By making their machine tools more sophisticated and streamlined, today's manufacturers can become more globally competitive.