Design of a Sensor System to Digitize Manual End Milling Machine to Collect Machine Data

Abstract

In the manufacturing system, machines and manufacturing data are becoming more closely
linked. In order to collect manufacturing data, there have been many new technologies that are
in line with the Industrial Revolution 4.0 to replace existing systems and machines. The
objective of this study is to design a sensor system that can collect and stream machine data
from an end milling machine to generate a manufacturing report. A prototype of this system
was designed using a Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+, PiCamera module, and infrared sensors for
installing onto the machine, while Microsoft Azure and Power BI were used to stream and
publish the data in a report form. The design was placed onto a milling machine where a
machinist had done one milling operation for one workpiece, the sensors collected the data of
X-position, Y-position, feed rate, and spindle speed, while deriving the percentage utilization
of total time for cutting steps. The end result was a system that was integrated with the milling
machine where the critical operation data are collected to produce a manufacturing report that
displays the use of the machine. For future studies, different applications for this kind of sensor
system can be used to digitize different manufacturing systems. Furthermore, an optimization
and standardization testing for this kind of manufacturing system could be set in the future as
well.