New Standard Enables Digital Manufacturing

4.0产业,数字制造or future manufacturing are only some of the buzzwords that represent the latest trend in our industry. With the potential to drastically change manufacturing in a way we have not seen since the invention of the steam engine, this is one trend that has everyone talking.

While much of it sounds futuristic, we are often left wondering exactly what needs to happen to get us there. Whether this is the next industrial revolution or evolution, the one absolute necessary element is data. Without good—make that great—data, widespread digital manufacturing and all the benefits it promises will only remain a vision.

This is where ISO 13399 and other developing standards come into play. The cutting tool standard defines common definitions for attributes of cutting tools from multiple suppliers, essentially eliminating descriptions unique to a particular company’s products in favor of one common nomenclature.

几十年来，所有切割工具供应商，凸轮供应商，机床建设者和其他软件供应商都有自己的方式来划分和构造有关工具的信息。即使对于这个行业的最大参与者来说，绝对不可能将所有切割工具数据映射到对数据感兴趣的各种利益相关者的要求。这个问题只有一种解决方案，那就是实施通信标准。

With ISO 13399, dimensions, features, parameters and parts are named and defined in a singular way. The standard accommodates new tools with multiple functions without the need to change the standard. The biggest benefit of it is that it defines each property by itself. In other words, properties have the same meaning regardless of the type of cutting tool described.

因此，ISO 13399是通信属性的一致方法。它标准化了描述工具而不是实际切割工具组件的信息。该标准甚至可以就项目和组件以及多功能工具进行复杂的沟通。借助标准启用的数字工具库（例如Adveon和Siemens MRL），公司可以在2D或3D渲染中创建工具组件，这些渲染随后将其导入到CAM软件中以进行仿真和设置。

What seems to be a neat little function that saves engineers some time and a few headaches, is actually a crucial element in building a data infrastructure for a connected and fully integrated manufacturing environment. More and more of these advanced functionalities in modern manufacturing systems heavily rely on access to a plethora of relevant information, both in pre- and post-machining phases as well as during the actual machining process. Information about available resources, such as tooling and setups, is only one of these elements, but a crucial one.

软件系统，例如CAD，CAM，CASE，PDM/EDM和其他计算机辅助技术，可以使彼此更加无缝地通信；工具输入可以是自动化的，而不是手动和缓慢的。用户的软件可以通过直接从其网站访问更新的工具数据来与工具供应商进行通信。

Gone are the days of looking up information in catalogs, of painstakingly interpreting data to be able to transfer it from one system to another and worrying about how many times one has to check it to get it right.

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此ISO 13399标准以中性格式提供切割工具信息。它独立于任何特定的系统或公司命名法。使用所有软件可以处理的标准明确定义的工具，系统之间的通信和电子数据交换的质量将达到前所未有的水平，从而使数据收集过程更加有效。它优化了制造资源的使用，并加快并提高了新工作，过程或组件的计划过程的质量。

Ultimately, ISO 13399 saves time and provides guaranteed data quality that systems and engineers can rely on. Together, with other crucial building blocks, it takes us one step closer to the future of digital manufacturing.