Read and React: Turn Your Challenges Into Touchdowns

This guest blog post features thoughts from Chris Robson, Engineering Supervisor (and OSP power user) for Morris Midwest, an Okuma distributor.

Many of us will be watching football later this week, so ‘tis the season for looking forward to some great games. Will your team win? On the football field the key to success is the team's ability to read and react both offensively and defensively. In today’s competitive manufacturing industry, the key to success is the same: we need to read the field in the marketplace and react swiftly with solutions that keep us marching up the field to the goal line.

I started my career as an applications engineer eight years ago, with the mindset of always being solutions driven. With every customer and every project there’s a challenge to find a solution. These challenges are welcome! I’ve noticed that the right attitude plays a big part in solving them, so I always work to be a team player when working with partners, and I also keep my mind open to "out of the box" solutions. And often I use a very effective play that I’ll share with you here: developing a custom CNC application solution using the power of the open architecture Okuma OSP-P CNC control.

Put This in Your Playbook: The Okuma API

The API (Application Programmable Interface) is a tool provided with Okuma’s OSP CNC control that allows users (like you and me) to write our own custom applications and allow a computer to access data on a read-and-write level on the CNC machine tool. With the API we can create apps that streamline operations or provide reporting data for processes such as:

• Machine offsets (tools and work)
• Tool registrations and assignments
• Machine equipment uptime and productivity data
• Common variables
• Program execution line
• M.D.I (manual data input) command line buffer
• Program selecting
• Current state of PLC I/O (input and output)
• Communicate with peripheral devices such as gages and robotic loaders
• …just to name a few

The OSP’s API even allows users to design their own interface to make it easier to perform operations, such as in the use of day-to-day commands for the machine tool.

So What Does This Mean for the End User?

Let's say you’re a small business running unattended weekend production and you need to know immediately if the machine has stopped running because of an alarm. With the OSP’s API and a free Gmail account, you can write an application that notifies you via email (which can be sent to your phone) if an alarm occurs on your CNC machine.

Another example is simplifying setups with a spindle probe on a machining center. The user can use the OSP’s API to write an application that has an easy-to-use interface for writing probing routines directly to the machine's command line buffer.

Turn Your Challenges Into Touchdowns

With the API and a bit of imagination you have nearly limitless capabilities at your fingertips. Now you can read and react your way to the manufacturing goal line. End runs and completed passes? Happen all the time. Fumbles? Pick it up and run. Touchdowns? Get more in your game. (Roughing the applications engineer? BIG penalty!)

To learn more about how you can harness the power of Okuma’s OSP API, contact us or your local distributor for more information. And feel free to share your feedback below – football metaphors are of course welcome.

Chris Robson is Engineering Supervisor for Morris Midwest, an Okuma America distributor.