[QAMTHE]

We have Ball Bar QC10. We use it to for checking of conditions/deviations from normal state of our CNC milling machines (mainly DECKEL MAHO and DMG Mori with Dialog 4, Dialog 11 and Sinumerik810) .We would like to create data base, connected to our ERP system, in which:

• to fill/describe all type deviations/defects of machines and which deviations are normal/admissible and which not ( same as tolerances of dimensions on the drawings);
• to enter each machine which we have and to upload results from check with ball bar to each machine with description/analysis of condition of machine;
• to can check condition of machine and to compare change of conditions during machine usage for long period of time;
• when machine conditions are out of normal deviations filled in to data base and machine defects will influence over its performance/ achieved quality of production ERP system to send notification to manager of Machines Maintenance Department, QA Manager, Production manager and Supervisors;
• to can fill inside information for urgent services of machines and to create a schedule for regular machine services/to create maintenance schedule for each machine and again ERP system to send notifications when should to be done prophylactic service of machines;

Our ERP system use Microsoft SQL.
Could you somebody help me with advice aand/or share experience and give me terms of references how to proceed.

Thank you in advance.

[QAMTHE]

Could anybody help us with this project?

[kheston]

QAMTHE,

Your post is quite old, now. But, given this is the first time I've seen it, I'll give answering a shot.

I don't know what formats the QC10 saves the data it gathers in, but if it is capable of exporting into a flatfile format (e.g. space or tab delimited, CSV, etc.), it would be relatively trivial to add a table within a new database on your SQL Server to which you could store the data. However, if Renishaw's only available files from the QC10 are in a custom/proprietary format for which they don't provide documentation, using data therefrom may prove to be difficult.

How you leverage the data you store is the harder part depending upon what your end goal is. If you wish to track the condition of your machines over time, a database is perfect. If you want to provide a pass/fail assessment for each dataset you collect using your ballbar, you don't need a database for that.

If you have a sample test output file (Googling didn't yield me one), I'd be happy to look at it to see whether it can be parsed easily into data that can be pushed into your SQL Server database and make further suggestions.