<p>Cyclic manufacturing process like grinding is the most commonly used method of producing parts with excellent precision. The requirement of the desired surface finish at the last stage of the manufacturing makes it the most crucial stage as well as prone to quality defects. Quality defect instances occur mainly due to the process or machine failure. Rotatory components like bearings are more likely to incur defects. The need for process monitoring and control becomes of utmost importance, considering their impact on product quality and the productivity of the manufacturer. The presented work focuses on the development of an intelligent grinding process monitoring and control system using vibration sensors. A real-time process monitoring tool is developed. The system has mainly three modules: realization of the sensor network and data display, monitoring and diagnosis system, and smart control module. The smart control module is comprised of the smart algorithm that suggests the change in the process parameters to compensate for the quality defects. A machine learning model is built and trained for the selection of the new process parameters. The whole setup is installed at the factory using a vibration sensor, mounting, sensor cables, DAQ, monitoring window, OPC server, and industrial PC as its required hardware components. After the installation, its functioning is demonstrated with the grinding process of the brake disc. Earlier the factory personnel used to check the finished product physically and then modify the process parameters, again and again, to get the product with the best quality. However, the development and implementation of such a smart system, made all the tasks autonomous. Results and feedback from the manufacturers about the system are quite encouraging. The system is very convenient, easy to use, and helpful to the manufacturers in reducing surface defect failures and can increase the overall productivity of the factory by 20% after its full installation. It has helped in transforming a conventional manufacturing factory into a smart factory along with the benefits in terms of economy. It is also going to help society by reducing the work hazard to the operator due to the prolonged quality checking hours and creating lots of new job opportunities in terms of intelligent and autonomous technology. The future path for this work involves making the whole system fully automated and after training, apply it to mass production. The predictive maintenance system for the grinding machine rotatory components can also be added to the same system using different sensors and analysis methodology.</p>

An Integrated Monitoring and Process Control System for Cyclic Manufacturing Process

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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