Inspection 4.0
Martin Wheeler, Director of Sales and Business Development, Tinius Olsen, discusses why Industry 4.0 planning can be extended from the manufacturing process to the materials testing lab.
The fourth industrial revolution is here, underpinned by increasing connectivity and automation. For materials and device testing platforms, this means systems capable of performing a test automatically with data flowing instantaneously through to wherever it is needed.
In discussing automation needs with clients, at Tinius Olsen we have found it useful to start by understanding which one of three classifications meets your expectations for the technology and your ROI. These classifications are created to work for us but are broadly applicable to most situations and can be adapted or expanded upon.
Classification 1; “No walking paper”
The automation of processes within a materials testing station/platform – everything is automated except an operator still enters and removes the test specimen.
This replaces basic machines and testers. At this technology level the operator is still present during a test and still picks and places the specimen into the tester, but then simply says “Start test” or makes one mouse click to start the test. Everything else is automatic, including test pass/fail, alert notifications and digital data flow into the user’s process.
Classification 2; “Lights out working”
Automation including pick and entry of test specimen and removal of specimen. Here integration with the user’s process, as with classification (1), is in the form of data flow in (specimen information) and results data out appended to this information. This level of automation requires nominal unskilled operator intervention limited to loading test specimens for a “shift” into a feeding rack system on the peripheral of an automated testing cell.
Classification 3; “Total process automation”
Full automation through “intimate” integration with the user’s wide scale process, achieved by the user themselves or their contracted developer and integrated process provider. Here, as part of the Tinius Olsen solution, we provide a remote interface for automation developers, ie. an API (Application Programming Interface) which the automation/integration development team use to incorporate the Tinius Olsen system into the wider process.
This level of automation requires no operators - test specimens can be delivered to the Tinius Olsen system from manufacture by AGV (Automated Ground Vehicles) and the specimen handling (robotics) is part of the developer’s solution.Here is a good example of an automated tensile ASTM D 638 and flexural ASTM D790 solution that we delivered recently under the need classification (2): A global polymer matrix composite manufacturer using glass, carbon and fibres in its composites needed a method to ensure minimal operator intervention and monitoring of tensile and flexural tests on its glass-filled composite materials.
Even though the company does not test a high number of batches a day, the several it does test must adhere to careful and fixed monitoring to ensure product quality and comply with industry standards, such as ASTM D638 tensile and ASTM D790 flexural.
With space at a premium in the lab facility, Tinius Olsen delivered a single “automated test cell” that incorporates two materials testing machine frames—one for tensile tests, the other for flexural tests.
Data integration is seamless from the client’s perspective, with data and specimens going in and spent specimens and data coming out.