What is data acquisition for production equipment?
Data acquisition (DAQ) refers to the automatic acquisition of non-electrical or electrical signals from analog and digital units under test, such as sensors and other devices under test, and sending them to a host computer for analysis and processing.
Industrial production equipment data acquisition utilizes ubiquitous sensing technology to collect and aggregate real-time data from various industrial production equipment in the cloud. It connects to different devices, systems, and products through various communication methods to collect large-scale, in-depth industrial production equipment data, as well as perform protocol conversion and edge processing of heterogeneous data, thus building the data foundation for an industrial internet platform.
The Importance and Challenges of Data Acquisition from Industrial Production Equipment
The collection of industrial big data provides a data foundation for industrial innovation and strategic development, and is also an essential step in building digital factories, achieving intelligent manufacturing, and moving towards Industry 4.0. As the most important part of industrial production, the various data from industrial production equipment are directly related to product and factory management.
A digital factory is not the same as an unmanned factory. The more complex and varied the product configuration and manufacturing process, the more human involvement is required. In a digital factory, workers primarily handle anomalies and adjust equipment. However, data collection has always been a traditional pain point for all manufacturing plants. There are numerous brands and types of automated equipment, with varying manufacturers and data interfaces. Foreign manufacturers offer limited local support, and equipment was purchased from different eras. Even if production stoppage data is automatically collected, it doesn't mean that all data for the entire manufacturing process is obtained. As long as there are other human involvement stages, the data will be incomplete.
Industrial production equipment data acquisition methods
There are three methods for data acquisition from industrial production equipment: direct network communication between the data system, acquisition via an industrial gateway, and acquisition via remote I/O. This article briefly discusses data acquisition in industrial production sites.
1. Direct network communication
Direct networking refers to connecting directly to the workshop's local area network without adding any hardware, using the CNC system's own communication protocol and communication port. This allows communication with the data acquisition server, where software displays, statistically analyzes, and collects data on machine tool power-on, power-off, running, paused, and alarm statuses, as well as recording alarm information.
High-end CNC systems all come equipped with Ethernet ports for data communication, enabling real-time monitoring of the CNC machine tool's operating status through different data transmission protocols. FANUC's 0i, 31i, and 18i series CNC systems all have Ethernet ports on the back of the control panel, allowing direct network communication via FANUC's FOCAS protocol; Siemens 840D systems, with PCU50 and later versions, can also achieve direct network communication via the OPC protocol.
2. Industrial gateway data collection
For CNC systems that do not have an Ethernet communication interface or do not support Ethernet communication, an industrial Ethernet gateway can be used to connect to the PLC controller of the CNC machine tool to collect equipment data and obtain the real-time status of the equipment's power-on, power-off, running, pause, and alarm status.
Industrial communication gateways can perform message conversion between various network protocols, that is, convert the communication protocols of various types of PLCs in the workshop into a standard protocol, through which the data acquisition server can obtain information of field PLC devices in real time.
3. Remote I/O acquisition
For devices that cannot communicate directly via Ethernet and do not have a PLC control unit, remote I/O can be deployed to collect device operation data. The device's power-on, power-off, running, alarm, and pause status can be collected in real time via remote I/O.
The remote I/O module is an industrial-grade remote acquisition and control module that provides passive node digital input acquisition. By analyzing the electrical system of the equipment, the required electrical signals are determined and connected to the remote I/O module. The module then converts the digital and analog signals of the electrical system into network data and transmits them to the data acquisition server through the workshop local area network.
