[step-manufacturing] Minutes of March 4th Conference Call

[Martin Hardwick]

Attendees
--------------
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, USA
David Loffredo, STEP Tools, USA
Julie Huang, Sandvik Sweden
Bengt Olsson, Sandvik, Sweden
Mikael Hedlind, Scania, Sweden
David Odendahl, Boeing, USA
Sid Venkatesh, Boeing, USA
Charles Gilman, GE, USA
Robert Erickson, Pratt & Whitney, USA
Vincent Marchetti, Ameritech, USA
Dan Finke, Penn State, USA
Chris Ligettii, Penn State, USA
Tom Raun, Iscar, USA
Than Huynh, Okuma, USA
Will Sobel, SystemInsights, USA
David Maderely, Siemens, UK
Christian Callet, Datakit, France
Alain Brail, Airbus (retired), France
Ian Stroud, EPFL, Switzerland

We discussed the Universal Plug and Play standard (UPnP). The MTConnect 
Institute plans to incorporate the UPnP discovery protocols, and 
harmonize with the UPnP sensor data specification, in future editions of 
its standards.
http://upnp.org/

In our projects we may be able to use the virtual rooms enabled by UPnP 
as neutral places to connect systems that support STEP and STEP-NC.

We discussed an additive manufacturing file in the ".CLI" format that 
has been converted to STEP-NC by STEP Tools. Three issues were raised:
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/additive

1. Are additive manufacturing processes portable between machines?
A process designed for plastic is unlikely to operate for powder metal 
or vice versa. However, if the goal is to apply an energy profile, to a 
material, for a given time, then a solution that has been designed for 
one machine should be portable to another machine if the profile, time 
and material are described in a standard, non-machine specific way.

2. What is the advantage of controlling the process?
If a part is only going to machined once then time spent on optimizing 
the process may be better spent on other activities. However, many 
organizations are announcing that they intend to produce additive 
manufacturing parts in large quantities. For example, General Electric 
has announced its intention to have 100,000 parts flying by 2020. In 
this case time spent optimizing the process may be well spent. In 
subtractive machining this is done by customizing the speeds and feeds 
to minimize tool wear and maximize manufacturing speeds while meeting 
the required design tolerances. In additive manufacturing there is a 
desire for similarly trade offs in the material characteristics while 
meeting the constraints.

3. How can we use the optimized data if additive manufacturing machines 
are closed?
The CLI format is only used by a small number of additive manufacturing 
machines. However, Siemens has surveyed the industry and found that most 
desktop machines are already using Gcodes. We have a robust and growing 
interface from STEP-NC to these codes for subtractive machining that we 
should be able to extend for additive machining.

We discussed the action items from the face to face meeting in Orlando.
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/CAM_exchange/Cycle_6/CAM_Exchange_Action_Items.pptx

  * ARL's development of the XML planning data for Boxy has had to be
    delayed until the next call.
  * GE is on track to get the CAD and CAM data for its airframe bracket
    released to the group by April 1st and May 1st
  * Siemens has shared its code for NX to STEP-NC translation with Boeing
  * Mitutoyo has agreed to develop a semantic GD&T model for the CDS
    (NAS 979) part that captures the machining constraints

A recording of this conference calls is on the web site at the address 
below:
ftp://www.steptools.com/private/CAM_exchange/Cycle_6/stepmanuf_telecon_20150304.wmv

The next conference call is planned for Wednesday March 18th. The times 
will be different for those outside of the USA because Congress has 
declared that summer will start this Sunday despite considerable 
evidence to the contrary.

Martin Hardwick
Team Leader ISO STEP-Manufacturing
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