On Trak to Industry 4.0

Job shops are facing the digital adoption challenge across two fronts – toolroom and production. “The transition across the business will be difficult for job shops,” says TRAK Machine Tools owner Steve Pinto. “Especially owners that don’t have teams of engineers and information technology (IT) specialists to help them evaluate and integrate new, digitally enabled machining operations.”

As a first step to help shops on the toolroom side, TRAK developed a line of machining centers, powered by the company’s popular ProtoTRAK CNC. Now the company is introducing an all-new line of production-level machines empowered by the Siemens Sinumerik One “digital twin” CNC platform.

Transition to digitalization

Tom Copeland is TRAK chief technology officer. During his 40 years with the company, he has seen how job shops can fall behind during technology transitions.

“Most shops are still at step one, getting started with what I call the dashboard era,” Copeland explains. “They are basically connecting machines to software applications, then monitoring those machines from a managerial dashboard. The benefits of this first step are to sort out connectivity and security issues along with preparing the organization to make data-driven decisions. But then shops need to take the next step. They need to implement software that connects machine tools and shop floor personnel. This provides the targeted information that enables an organization to implement new business models. Together with Siemens, we can help our customers take that next step.”

“Automation can mean any kind of mechanism that enables a process to go from part-to-part,” Copeland says. “The Siemens Sinumerik One platform enables TRAK and our job shop customers to cross over into that level of automation. We don’t need to build our own platforms with all the related IT and software development. The Siemens platform is already there with its Control to MindSphere connectivity and support for common machine protocols such as OPC-UA and MTConnect. Also, with the Sinumerik One software development kit and MindSphere API, TRAK is able to add new features targeted at specific markets without us having to write complex software from scratch.”

Uplifting tool rooms and production

Leo Gammaitoni, TRAK engineering manager, sees the company’s relationship with Siemens as perfectly aligned with TRAK in the delivery of digitally evolved production machines that are easy to adapt at the operator level.

“The Siemens control has long been the closest to what we’re doing in terms of conversational CNC, the ease of use, the ease of programming,” Gammaitoni says. “Our ProtoTRAK controls and machines serve prototyping and low-volume production. But machine shops also need that ease of use on production equipment, and Siemens was the No. 1 choice to partner with to do just that.”

Central to the digitalization strategy at TRAK is the adoption of the Sinumerik One control’s digital twin. This software module, Create MyVirtual Machine, enables machine motion to be visualized and exactly measured on a 3D plane. The digital twin workspace moves machine design, operation, maintenance, and operator training far beyond the limitations of current simulation software.

“Using Create MyVirtual Machine, I can see the entire machine in exact 3D before it’s even built,” Gammaitoni says. “I can customize the machine, make changes, and see what happens. I can trace a tool path and be confident that it’s 100% accurate.”

Gammaitoni and TRAK plan to collaborate with Siemens to leverage the Sinumerik One CNC platform to create other leaps in production-level machining. The integration of more powerful yet intuitive CNC opens the way to building production machines with much faster spindle speeds, improved surface finishes, faster setups, and parts completion – all contributing to faster time-to-market.

For example, by exploring within the Sinumerik One CNC digital twin environment, Gammaitoni and his engineers proved that the motion of their new production machines could evolve from traditional linear ball guides to linear roller guides.

“We’ve gone to a more rigid production machine because we proved within the digital twin environment that we could take advantage of that greater rigidity,” Gammaitoni says. “This was also made possible by the Siemens control, which is capable of moving faster and cutting at higher speed rates.”

A new set of digital tools

Chris Britton feels privileged to have collaborated with the leadership team at TRAK Machine Tools for more than 15 years. As the Siemens account manager, he has closely participated in the adoption of digital CNC technology at TRAK.

“It was never about selling features and functions,” Britton says. “When we talked about the Sinumerik One platform and the path to digitalization, we didn’t say, ‘Here’s this incremental improvement in hardware with more features.’ We talked about a digitally enabled platform for job shop business evolution and the software tools to take you there.”

Within the Siemens digital twin design environment of Sinumerik One, a numerically exact 3D tool path accounts for all related forces, including tool type and speed, part material, part shape, and machine rigidity.

Create MyVirtual Machine software enables the machine design engineer to see in 3D exactly how the machine will perform before actually building the machine.

Run MyVirtual Machine enables a job shop to use virtual 3D to dramatically cut part production time, train machine operators, and improve shop-wide processes.

ShopMill and ShopTurn software visually guide the simple and efficient setup of a production-level machine.

Owning the challenge

Having found the right technology partner in Siemens, the company that pioneered the ProtoTRAK control for tool rooms everywhere is helping those customers confidently take the next step into digitally enabled production.

“Prototyping and production are different operations requiring different technology solutions,” Pinto says. “TRAK can now offer machine technology solutions across both sides of a customer’s business.”

True to its beginnings, TRAK leadership is seeing to it that the company continues to earn the trust of customers by helping machine shops survive and thrive. Whether you call it digitalization, IoT, or Industry 4.0, the way forward for TRAK starts with trust.

Siemens Industry Inc. https://www.usa.siemens.com/cnc
TRAK Machine Tools https://www.southwesternindustries.com