Easy Way to Connect Legacy Machine Tools with IoT Devices

Memex Inc. (Burlington, ON) offers their MTC-One, one of the world’s most advanced and easiest to configure MTConnect® connectivity boards for legacy machine tools and IoT devices. “There is no company on the planet that is better positioned than we are in terms of MTConnect enabling legacy machine tools and IoT devices,” stated Dave Edstrom, the chief technology officer of MEMEX and author of MTConnect: To Measure Is To Know, as well as former president and chairman of the MTConnect Institute. “The MTC-One is our third generation of MTConnect connectivity boards and clearly addresses “the last meter” challenge, where we leave no machine behind when it comes to legacy connectivity on the plant floor. The board is truly the “Swiss army knife” of legacy connectivity solutions to connect to any device on the plant floor and then have that device MTConnect-enabled.”

The MTC-One has a number of leading-edge features, including:

• Powerful ARM SOM microprocessor capable of running Linux, MTConnect adapters, agents and other IoT software, such as Complex Event Processing (CEP) and countless other applications that might be needed to connect to and process data from devices.
• NXP®/Freescale i.MX 6DualLite, ARM Cortex™-A9, 1.0 GHz, Dual Core, 512MB DDR3 (64 Bit), 4GB eMMC (8 Bit), two 10/100 Mbit IEEE1588 Ethernet ports.
• Numerous Connectivity Options: Wireless (Wi-Fi b/g/n), up to 110 USB devices, 4 USB Host (Type A) connectors, USB (Micro A-B connector) diagnostic port, eight onboard digital inputs (this provides optical isolation between the MTC-One and the device being monitored that allows the board and the device to be electrically isolated), two onboard digital outputs and analog I/O Interfaces, as well as onboard Fieldbus/Industrial Ethernet Protocol Interface.
• Wide variety of option sensors ranging from power monitoring, 8-channel ADC, thermocouple, accelerometer, RH sensor, digital input, DIO and others are on the MTC-One roadmap.
• Industrial quality with onboard real-time clock with battery backup, graceful shutdown circuitry to prevent data loss, high voltage surge protection, Micro SD Card Slot and DVI-I display connector which can also convert to HDMI for connecting to shop displays.
• Flexible installation choices with either magnetic, screw or din rail mount and can take 6-27 VDC as its power input.

A clear differentiator for the MTC-One is the configuration and transformation logic software that easily handles the capture of signals and protocols, then passes that data to the transformation logic layer (such as the well-understood ladder logic) and finally the ability to easily map this transformed data to the MTConnect standard.

Memex also launched MERLIN Tempus™ and MERLIN Tempus Enterprise Edition (EE), the next generation of the award-winning MERLIN Manufacturing Execution System (MES). MERLIN Tempus is an open and extensible manufacturing execution system (MES) platform that offers the next generation of tools and a dynamic configurable dashboard that provides a complete view of the shop floor. Tempus is Latin for time. This MES measures and analyzes manufacturing time and tells manufacturing exactly how time is being used on the shop floor in machine tools, with operators, with sensors and any other asset. Developed using state-of-the-art software engineering technologies, it delivers green-light metrics and analytical capabilities to effectively reduce downtime while increasing throughput and profits. MERLIN Tempus EE extends the capabilities of the MERLIN Tempus platform with full overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), integrated job scheduling. MERLIN Tempus supports MTConnect, Fanuc Focas, Fanuc I/O link to MTConnect, OPC and other software protocols.

“We are very excited about being a Memex partner to build apps that can take full advantage of the state-of-the-art MERLIN Tempus open and extensible platform,” noted Steve Fanning, the chief executive officer and president of Path to Progress (Oakland, MD). “It is important to understand that these are highly scalable, extensible and are open MES platforms,” added Edstrom. “This is significant because it greatly simplifies and truly enables customers and partners to build upon the countless features and services they provide.”

Memex Inc., 3425 Harvester Road, # 200, Burlington, Ontario L7N 3N1 Canada, 905-635-1540, Fax: 905-631-9640, www.memex.ca.