At Great Lakes Industry (GLI), a manufacturer of power transmission components for the agriculture and construction industries, a gantry robot loader was added to a 20-year-old lathe that had already been retrofitted with MDSI's OpenCNC® software CNC. This is the automated process: The robot loader loads the part, the lathe machines one side, the robot flips the part over, the lathe machines the other side, and then the robot unloads the part.

Because the OpenCNC® software CNC from MDSI includes a real-time database, which collects an ongoing log of machine events in real time, GLI manufacturing engineer Rick Stafford was able to measure the productivity changes that resulted from using the automated loader vs. using the operator to load, flip, and unload parts. The results were impressive.

"The productivity gain was a hundred percent," said Stafford. "We were able to measure our cycle start- and end-of-program, and calculate cycle times from there. The resulting data showed very consistent cycle times with the robot -- consistency that showed up across 95% of the parts."

The real-time database is an integral part of the unbundled OpenCNC® software CNC control architecture. OpenCNC includes a soft CNC, soft PLC, HMI, and real-time database in one integrated software program that closes the servo loop entirely in software, without using proprietary hardware or motion control cards.

Unlike closed or proprietary hardware controls, just one copy of OpenCNC can control the lathe, the gantry robot loader -- and also coordinate the two, as well as collect the data -- using just one PC, using a single processor, running Windows NT.

Operators also love the new automation. "They don't have to lift parts anymore," Stafford said, "so the robot has provided an ergonomic benefit, too. The loader actually loads slower than a human, but it is more consistent." As a result of the data, GLI has plans to add 16 more gantry robots to the manufacturing facility for use on other cells.

"We would not have been able to do this without OpenCNC," Stafford said. "With any other CNC, adding automation would require buying a separate control, a separate PC, a separate user interface, and learning separate programming. For us this has been a great productivity boost without creating a huge capital drain."