Advanced technologies continue to increase their presence into manufacturing operations resulting in boosted productivity and quality, along with decreased scrap and maintenance costs. The inclusion of advanced technologies, including those focused on enhancing maintenance strategies, also bring challenges. Advanced technologies feature greater complexity than their predecessors. This enlarged complexity further highlights the need to effectively verify and validate the performance of advanced technologies operating within manufacturing environments. Advanced monitoring, diagnostic, and prognostic technologies (collectively known as PHM) represents a leap forward for the manufacturing community to improve and sustain necessary levels of productivity and quality while reducing equipment downtime. PHM integration typically leads to the enhancement of maintenance strategies. PHM technologies have been implemented in manufacturing environments with varying degrees of success. Developing effective measurement practices enhances and eases the adoption of PHM. Personnel at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are performing research to promote the design, implementation, verification, and validation of manufacturing PHM technologies.

This presentation details NIST’s efforts to produce publicly-available test methods and innovative sensor technologies to enhance maintenance strategies of robotic workcells and machine tools. Several NIST-developed sensors for application in manufacturing environments will be discussed with an emphasis on a sensor that promotes assessing robot workcell accuracy degradation. Specifically, robot workcells (defined to include robots, end-effectors, sensors, controllers, and other supporting automation) are becoming more prevalent in manufacturing facilities to increase productivity and accuracy of operations while reducing costs. Increasing usage of robot workcells, including broadening their tasks in more diverse operational environments, raises their complexity making them more susceptible to faults and failures. Integrating PHM technologies into these workcells can lessen the realization of undesirable events and lead to the optimization of strategic maintenance activities. NIST personnel have developed the *Identification and Isolation of Robot Workcell Accuracy Degradation* test method and companion *Position Verification Sensor with Discrete Output* to serve as a practical PHM capability for the manufacturing community to verify and validate pre-existing robot workcell PHM technologies. The test method and sensor can also serve as a means of directly assessing the accuracy of a robot workcell. Both the test method and sensor are active within a testbed at NIST where multiple data streams, including sensor data and robot level data, have been collected to support the analysis of both the sensor and the test method. Transferring these technologies to industry, including pilot deployments, is strongly encouraged to extend the research and achieve factory-floor level impact.


Advancing Monitoring, Diagnostic, and Prognostic Technologies Through Test Method and Sensor Development

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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