Machine Completion Monitoring

As a lark, shortly after we started Foote and Flame, I hooked up a monitoring device to each laser cutter, so they could report when they were busy or idle. It really was a bit of fun - curiosity at the time.

Then I hooked it up to a dashboard, displayed in several locations in the workshop, that showed each machine and what it was doing. And made the dashboard announce which machine just went idle.

The incredibly useful thing

Turns out - this was amazing for machine utilisation. As soon as a machine finished, regardless of where you were in the noisy workshop, you knew it was finished, and could go and get it back onto the next task. Once I had it, I just couldn't go back - machines never sat idle for very long anymore.

The benefits

• High machine utilisation: you can easily miss when machines finish and need attention. This reminds you so you can keep them busy. This is great for machines tucked away in other parts of the workshop.
• Tracking machine utilisation: we stored the start, stop, and run times of each machine. Afterwards, you can go back and see just how much the machines are being used to validate if they're underworked, overworked, or need extra maintenance. There are so many uses for this data to use machines more effectively or plan future purchases.

How it worked

This is where the creativity comes in.

The laser cutters had an output specifically for a status lamp, so this was easily able to be monitored and sent onto the dashboard. This was all on the low voltage (24V) side, but still requires an appropriate person to wire up and confirm the safety.

The UV printers were different: they did have a status output, but instead, I actually monitored their SNMP traffic on the network and used that to determine their state. This allowed me to catch extra states, like when the printers went into cleaning mode, so you could at a glance understand why they were taking a while on a specific job.

Many machines have this capability, or we can get creative to find a way to monitor them. There are plenty of ways to monitor machines without modifying them at all, retaining their safety features and keeping their warranty intact.