Advanced troubleshooting in Industry 4.0 with xynLog

We reached out to our customers to share their experiences with using xynLog, and we bring you their stories.

Introduction:

Sometimes you encounter a technical issue that keeps you up at night. You constantly think about it, trying to understand where, when, and how it arose. And when you finally solve the issue, you often find it wasn't as complicated as it seemed. However, the problem lies in losing a lot of time sifting through information, which can be contradictory. Or even worse, in a rush, you might create additional problems while searching for a solution. This is exactly what one of our customers experienced.

Challenge in Practice:

We have a customer who owns two lathes. Lacking the necessary knowledge, he entrusted the creation of programs and technology to an external programmer. Everything went smoothly for a long time until bad pieces began to appear on one of the projects. Although the tool technology and the NC program were the same on both machines, faulty pieces repeatedly appeared on one of the lathes, and no one knew why.

Step-by-Step Solution:

Despite efforts, the customer couldn't solve the problem. Neither checking every produced piece, regular controls and measuring the machine's temperature load, adjusting cutting parameters, nor changing tools brought a solution. The technical condition of the machine, which could cause different tool wear, wasn't the problem either. Faulty pieces appeared sporadically, meaning each piece had to be checked before being sent to the customer. In desperation, the customer turned to his contacts to ask if anyone had encountered a similar problem. That's where our xynLog application came in. We offered the customer the opportunity to try our app for free and together look at the data to find the cause of the problem.

Breakthrough with xynLog:

When we connected online the following week, they provided information and the day they found the mismatched pieces. From the records in xynLog's analytical module, we exported data for the day the mismatched pieces were found. Using basic Excel functions for data visualization revealed that the machine was machining with the wrong tool length.

Identifying the issue with the tool length led us to consider that the error might be in the axis, tool correction, or possibly dirt. It turned out that the problem was due to an error in the control system or rather in the NC program when the program couldn't correctly load the value of a variable after running uninterrupted for a long time. Therefore, it was enough to adjust the NC code to better suit the machine's capabilities.

How the Error Occurred:

The error occurred under specific conditions:

• The machine was machining in an automatic cycle from bar material.
• The program ran uninterrupted without tool checks or chip removal.
• The bar stock was divided into pieces of different lengths, which caused discrepancies.

Conclusion:

Identifying the cause of such a problem requires diligent work and time. Thanks to xynLog, we identified the problem in 10 minutes and solved its cause in 60 minutes.

If you also want to make your life easier, get in touch with us.

xynLog team.