More knowledge, better decisions: Digitalization & Industry 4.0

Founded in 2011 by Nathan Byman as a contract machine shop, Wolfram Manufacturing Technologies has morphed into a production technology laboratory, which is both a machine shop and a technology consulting firm that helps original equipment manufacturers with tools like adaptive machining, according to the company.

“We were basically going to build the company around the best technology that was available and try to figure out how to reduce defects and make a simpler way to machine,” said Byman, president of the Austin, Texas-based company.

Wolfram employs about 20 people and operates eight machine tools at its 557-sq-m (6,000-sq.-ft.) shop.

“Though about half of those people are dedicated to taking the technology and software that we work with and helping other machine shops,” Byman said.

He said the Tool Monitoring Adaptive Control system from Caron Engineering Inc. in Wells, Maine, was one of the core technologies that Wolfram integrated into its machining operation from the get-go. The system uses sensors, a dedicated high-speed data processor and an intuitive human-machine interface to measure tool wear and provide real-time control over cutting operations.

“I have run some really large facilities in the past with hundreds of machine tools, and it’s where I learned about TMAC,” Byman said. “I would not run a shop without it.”

He said Wolfram also needed a shop monitoring tool, but after trying a variety of products from major developers, he determined that none provided the overall shop perspective that he wanted. As a result, Wolfram began development on its OnTakt production management and machine monitoring software about three years ago.

“The idea was it was going to show us what was going on with the shop, just whether the machines were running or not, whether they were producing parts,” Byman said. “But then what we realized is it would be incredibly powerful for tracking our tool consumption. And so we started making sure that it could register and track all the tool changes for all the tools in the shop and tie them to parts.”

With OnTakt, he said Wolfram can set targets for cutting tool life. For example, if a tool is under its target on several occasions, the software automatically captures that information and notifies the company via Microsoft Teams or Slack that there’s a tool issue.

“We are fixing things and recovering from them while other people still think everything is fine,” Byman said.

To bolster Wolfram’s ability to talk with other machine tools, he said the company purchased XMC in September, which is a universal machine communication platform that connects supervisory control and data acquisition, HMI, manufacturing intelligence and custom applications to diverse shop floor machines and devices.