20 April, 2023The R&D&i Project “SMART-EASY”, funded by CDTI and spearheaded by Nicolás Correa and Basque companies Ibarmia, Shuton and Talleres MyL, developed autonomous smart machines in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of industrial manufacturing processes. The initiative, which kicked off in 2020 and ended in December 2022 will enable the times and costs associated with the phase of defining and launching manufacturing operations to be reduced to 50% of the current figures; milling machine maintenance costs to be cut by over 15%; the consumption of material resources used in machining operations to be cut by up to 20%; and, lastly, it will facilitate reductions of over 20% in consumption of the consumables, lubricants and refrigerants used in machining operations.
Different hardware and software technologies have been developed which are geared towards facilitating safe, productive and high end quality manufacturing operations and using monitoring to render the machine capable of automatic decision making. This uses Artificial Vision systems aimed at automating different auxiliary operations -such as parts alignments and ties-, to provide control systems capable of real-time decision making, to guarantee productive and stable machining, using predictive component maintenance systems.
Other systems developed throughout the project are: thermal twins for machines that enable application of online offsetting techniques for thermal errors; systems to oversee the stability and productivity of manufacturing processes that include a diagnostic and online action system to detect the presence of any error or deviation; systems to monitor the health status of the more critical components of the machine by executing regular checking cycles; systems to record information on manufacturing processes, such as tools, surface quality, cutting parameters, etc.; a tool manager based on process data that enables parameters such as status and the remaining life of these tools to be estimated.
This initiative has been spearheaded by Nicolás Correa alongside Basque companies Ibarmia, Shuton and Talleres MyL, as well as other partners, such as GNC-Hypatia, Inmapa Aeronáutica, Álava Ingenieros and MonoM.
